‘Emancipation’: Will Smith’s New Movie Put on Hold Until Next Year

On 04.02.22 I pondered whether Apple TV was going to kick the football and delay Will Smith’s upcoming Oscar- bait vehicle “Emancipation.”

More than a month later, Antoine Fuqua’s film has been moved by Apple from its initial 2022 release date to an undetermined 2023 slot.

This has everything to do with Will Smith. He’s toxic right now. Most of the industry hates him for what he did to Chris Rock. It’s quite clear that Smith’s assault of Rock has put his entire career in jeopardy, or at the very least in temporary hiatus. He probably needs some kind of kumbaya public moment with Rock, maybe an Oprah interview, but I doubt Rock will want to play along.

And so, instead Smith has decided to hide in India and practice transcendental meditation with Jaggi Vasudev aka Sadhgur. I’m not even joking. He’s gone to the far reaches of the East, where no Western media will ever be able to find him.

Apple invested more than $120 million on “Emancipation,” Fuqua’s slavery drama. Set in 1863, Smith plays a real life slave named Peter from a Louisiana plantation. The epic, which is already in the can, was predicted to be a Smith-led Oscar vehicle for the fall festivals.