Apple TV + has chickened out as far as releasing Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith‘s Emancipation, a 19th Century runaway slave drama, in a timely fashion.
Everyone was expecting to see this historical, fact-based saga during the fall ’22 award season, but Apple is afraid of releasing it during the same year as the 3.27 Oscar slapping incident.
The plan is now to release Emancipation sometime in ’23, although it would be idiotic to open it at any time other than award season.
Apple knows that a year’s delay isn’t going to change a damn thing, and that the slap will influence much of the press coverage whenever it comes out.
If the Apple team had any courage they would stick to the ’22 plan…damn the torpedoes. If it’s a powerful, well-made film it’ll gather Oscar noms and do decent business. The public won’t give much of a damn either way. Only the Apple pussies are flinching.
In the film Smith will play a slave named Peter (the actual slave’s name was Gordon) who escapes from a Louisiana plantation after being whipped severely. A photo of his horrid back wounds became a galvanizing factor in turning fence-sitters against slavery.