EXCLUSIVE: Actor and rap artist Tip “T.I.” Harris and John Ortiz (Fast & Furious, Fast & Furious 6) have signed to topline Flint, a feature set against the backdrop of the Flint, Michigan water crisis written by Malcolm M. Mays, who will also direct. The project hails from Will Smith and James Lassiter-founded Overbrook Entertainment. Clarence Hammond and Dougie Cash will produce on behalf of Overbrook along with Tommy Oliver.

Flint is about a spiritually reformed ex-convict who finds himself embroiled in a murder mystery, set upon by his ex-lover and a young mentee that unravels the very fabric of the water crisis afflicting the community he grew up in.

Overbrook’s Lassiter and Caleeb Pinkett will serve as executive producers alongside Harris and Brian Sher from Grand Hustle Films as well as the late auteur John Singleton, a longtime mentor and friend of Mays, who helped bring the film to fruition. Mays was also series regular for the first two seasons of the Singleton co-created FX series, Snowfall.

Harris was last seen on the big screen in Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp and upcoming has Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy, RZA-directed heist thriller, Cut Throat City, and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter. Ortiz’s credits include Bumblebee, The Cloverfield Paradox, and Kong: Skull Island. He’ll next appear in James Gray’s Ad Astra opposite Brad Pitt and the Netflix series, Messiah.

Harris is repped by APA and Category 5 Entertainment, Ortiz is with Gersh, Principal Entertainment and Schreck Rose Dapello Adams, and Mays is a client of CAA and GSA Entertainment.