Smith, Warner Bros head to 'The Sticks'

Will Smith has agreed to produce Welcome to the Sticks for Warner Bros, Variety reports.

The film will be based on the hit French comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, which centred around a post office worker banished to a redneck town where inhabitants speak in an incomprehensible 'Ch'ti' dialect.

Smith, James Lassiter and Ken Stovitz will produce the US remake. The original film, directed by Dany Boon, proved a huge hit in France, grossing more than $190 million in its native country.

Of the film's success, Stovitz said: "There are only 65 million people who live in France, and $191 million seemed to defy all logic. But when we saw the film, it's obvious why it works.

"We will probably place the character in a global corporation, and he literally gets sent to the sticks, but finds that rather than a backward place, it provides all that was missing in his life."