Emancipation

If there’s anything that Will Smith regrets as much as slapping Chris Rock at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony shortly before winning Best Actor, it’s turning down the chance to star in Django Unchained. There’s a good chance that the 2012 Quentin Tarantino movie, which ultimately starred Jamie Foxx in the title role, would not have done much to change the trajectory of Smith’s long and distinguished career, which remains remarkable for the speed and permanency with which his stardom moved from music to television to feature films. But maybe it could have gotten Smith his Oscar a decade sooner and if nothing else it would have put him in a second great movie to go along with Men in Black.

It will take more time before people’s opinions of Smith are not shaped so dramatically by the events of last March, which saw Smith rush the stage and assault his fellow funnyman on international television and then hesitate to apologize in his acceptance speech and the immediate aftermath until the Academy already ousted him from their ranks and banned him from attending the ceremony for a decade. As Smith’s subsequent attempts to heal his bruised reputation have sputtered, the best course may be to just move on, something he tries to do in Emancipation, a miscalculated slavery drama that should do nothing to quell the actor’s Django regrets.

After questioning the creative vision of Tarantino, Smith now places his trust in veteran action filmmaker Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) and seasoned screenwriter Bill Collage (Allegiant, Assassin’s Creed) for an AppleTV+ original that only appears to be crashing awards season at the eleventh hour.