Serious question: If you were a senior Apple TV+ exec, would you advocate pushing full speed ahead for the late ‘22 release of Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith’s Emancipation, an historical chase thriller about a real-life slave named Gordon who had been whipped severely before fleeing a Louisiana plantation?
Or would you step back and furrow your brow and go “hmmm”? Or would you sell it off?
If it was my call, I would say “fuck it…release that sucker and let the chips fall. Smith is flawed, sure, but who isn’t? The press will jump all over him, but how many times can he say ‘I’m deeply ashamed that I did a brutish, asinine thing”? Walk on, stand tall, turn the page and keep saying ‘this is about Gordon, not Will Smith.'”
From Andrew Wallenstein‘s “What It Takes To Break Will Smith Out of Movie Jail“:
