According to Variety, Will Smith and director Jonathan Mostow have committed to Tonight, He Comes -- a development that has Columbia Pictures eyeing a production start in Los Angeles by next summer.

Vince Gilligan rewrote Vincent Ngo's script. Sony Pictures Entertainment's Amy Pascal acquired the project earlier this year in a bidding battle.

Smith will play a disaffected and underappreciated superhero in a mid-life crisis. Akiva Goldsman and Michael Mann will produce with Smith and his Overbrook Entertainment partner, James Lassiter.

Mostow has just been signed to a rich holding deal while the budget process takes place.

The script languished until Goldsman set it up at Artisan with production head Richard Saperstein, simply because it was the "Da Vinci Code" scribe's favorite script. Mann became attached to direct, and when he instead opted to helm Miami Vice, Artisan put the pic in turnaround.

Mann and Goldsman then hooked in Mostow and Smith, who was just coming off the romantic comedy hit Hitch. Columbia jumped on the deal as several other studios circled.

Saperstein will exec produce.

Smith just completed starring for Columbia with son Jaden and Thandie Newton in The Pursuit of Happyness, a Gabrielle Muccino-directed drama that Smith's Overbrook partner Lassiter produced with Todd Black.

Mostow will push back two projects: "Swiss Family Robinson," a film he rewrote with Sam Montgomery for Disney and Mandeville's David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, and Terminator 4.