The fallout from Will Smith's violent assault of Chris Rock on the Oscars stage continues. Photo / Getty Images
The fallout from Will Smith's violent assault of Chris Rock on the Oscars stage continues. Photo / Getty Images
The fallout from Will Smith's violent assault of Chris Rock on the Oscars stage continues as two more of his upcoming projects hit the skid.
One – National Geographic series Pole to Pole – has been delayed for several months while another – Netflix movie Bright 2 – has reportedly been canned altogether.
Bright 2 was the long-mooted sequel to David Ayer's $90 million fantasy movie. It starred Will Smith as a human police officer to Joel Edgerton's orc cop in a world where centaurs, elves and magic exist, in a story involving a wand and a plot to stop the resurrection of a Dark Lord.
Despite being smashed by critics – Indiewire condemned it as the worst movie of the year – who rounded on Bright for its poor plotting, uninspired action sequences and total lack of character development, Bright was popular with Netflix audiences.
Eleven million accounts watched the movie in the first three days, according to Nielsen data at the time. Within a month, a sequel had been greenlit with Ayer, Smith and Edgerton expected to return. Original screenwriter Max Landis, who had been embroiled in abuse allegations, was not to return.
The sequel to Smith's 2017 film, Bright has reportedly been canned altogether. Photo / Supplied
The sequel was supposed to start production in 2018 but was continually delayed due to scheduling conflicts and eventually other directors were being lined up to take over from Ayer who had moved on to other projects.
Bloomberg reporter Lucas Shaw, who revealed the news of Bright 2's demise, claimed the cancellation is not directly due to the Oscars incident. Netflix has axed a string of in-production titles in the wake of its loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of this year.
Bloomberg also reported Pole to Pole, which was due to start shooting in three weeks, would be delayed until the northern hemisphere autumn. The show will follow Smith as he visits the north and south poles.
Smith has made two other series with National Geographic – Welcome to Earth and One Strange Rock – which are available on the streaming platform Disney+.
In the month since Smith slapped Rock during the live global broadcast of the Oscars ceremony, the actor and producer has had his fortunes reversed. Netflix dropped another Smith production Fast & Loose while his already filmed movie Emancipation has no release date.
