Will Smith cries as he accepts the award for best performance by an actor in a leading role. Photo / AP
Will Smith cries as he accepts the award for best performance by an actor in a leading role. Photo / AP
The dominoes are falling for Will Smith.
A week ago, he was one of the few proper superstars of the big screen and now everyone is steering clear of his toxic brand thanks to his violent antics onstage at the Oscars.
For Hollywood studios, that means either pulling out or pausing upcoming projects involving the actor. No one wants a publicity tour dominated by reruns of the infamous footage or 342 questions from journalists about his rehabilitation.
The Smith moratorium is expected to be temporary, with an unnamed studio executive telling The Hollywood Reporter that "he's not kryptonite yet".
Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage while presenting the award for best documentary feature at the Oscars. Photo / AP
The revelation of a violent, dark side in such a public way has jeopardised the decades Smith has spent decades carefully curating a reputation as a hard worker, as a box office draw and as an approachable, affable celebrity who turned it on for fans on the red carpet and in interviews.
Until Smith can fully rehabilitate his image, which could include a reconciliation with Chris Rock, the comedian he slapped onstage for a joke directed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, Smith's brand is tarnished.
For the moment though, there's a risk in releasing a Smith project anytime soon. Among those in jeopardy:
Netflix was already skittish about the thriller Fast & Loose. A week before the Oscars, Fast & Loose lost its director in David Leitch, the stuntman-turned-filmmaker who helmed Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and the upcoming Bullet Train.
Leitch was attached to two films, Fast & Loose at Netflix and Fall Guy at Universal. Leitch decided to go with the Ryan Gosling-starring Fall Guy as his next project which left Fast & Loose without a director.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, once Netflix lost Leitch, the streamer scrambled to find a replacement, but not in the time before the Smith debacle consumed the industry and global headlines.
With the double whammy of no director and a star who did a 180 from asset to liability, Fast & Loose has been "quietly moved" to the back burner, reported THR.
It doesn't mean the movie will never be made, or even made with a different person, but with this much drama surrounding it off-screen, Netflix will want to give it some time before rolling cameras.
The movie was to feature Smith as an amnesiac that slowly discovers his double life as a rich crime boss and poor CIA agent.
Emancipation (Apple TV+)
Smith has already wrapped filming on Emancipation, which makes it the most pressing upcoming release on his slate.
The movie is based on the true story of an escaped enslaved person during the American Civil War, whose horrific scarring was captured in a series of photographs. Director Antoine Fuqua said the script had "hit my heart and soul in so many ways".
Smith plays the lead role alongside Ben Foster, Mustafa Shakir and Australian actor Charmaine Bingwa, from a screenplay by William N. Collage.
Apple bought the distribution rights to Emancipation for a reported US$130 million in a bidding war against studios Warner Bros, MGM, Lionsgate and Universal. At the time, it was a coup for the tech company to secure the rights to a Smith star vehicle which also had potential as a serious awards season contender.
Jada Pinkett Smith, from left, Willow Smith, Will Smith, Jaden Smith and Trey Smith arrive at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Photo / AP
Apple became the first streaming service to win the Best Picture Oscar at this year's ceremony with the heartwarming CODA, which the company bought for US$25 million after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Emancipation was originally expected to be released later this year, presumably at one of the prestigious film festivals that traditionally serve as a launch pad for an Oscars campaign, such as Venice, Telluride, Toronto or New York.
Early speculation was that Smith was expected to be competitive on the awards circuit for the second consecutive year – if he had prevailed, he would've become that rare actor with back-to-back Oscar wins, a club that only includes Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy as members.
If Apple ploughs ahead with its original release plan for the next awards season, it may find itself facing headwinds. One Oscar voter, actor Rutanya Alda, told THR she had voted for Smith this year for his role in King Richard, but would "never, ever vote for anything Will Smith is in again" after he assaulted Rock.
One of Smith's earliest big screen successes was the 1995 Michael Bay caper Bad Boys, in which he starred alongside Martin Lawrence as two Miami cops investigating a cocaine heist.
The film was a financial success and a bigger-budgeted sequel followed in 2003. It would be another 17 years before Smith, Bay and Lawrence reunited for the next instalment Bad Boys for Life. As one of the few blockbusters to be released in 2020 before the pandemic shutdown of cinemas, it became one of the year's highest grossing films.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, stars of the Bad Boys films. Photo / Getty Images
Another sequel was greenlit almost immediately by Sony.
Now, in the wake of the Smith scandal, Bad Boys 4 could become another casualty. THR cited an inside source who claimed Bad Boys 4 has been moved from active development to "pause". The same article said Smith already had 40 pages of the script before the Oscars shenanigans.
Through Westbrook, the production company founded by Smith and Pinkett Smith in 2019, Smith is a producer on several projects, including ones in which neither he nor his wife appears on screen.
The most high-profile of those are Cobra Kai, the Karate Kid sequel series, and Bel-Air, a dramatic reboot of his 1990s sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Cobra Kai and Bel-Air are not expected to be affected by Smith's troubles as both are less obviously associated with him.
King Richard, the Richard Williams biopic for which he won his Best Actor Oscar, was also produced by Westbrook.
Westbrook was recently valued at US$600 million after selling a minority stake to former Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer.
There are also several works in the pipeline across a jumble of studios and streamers, including Emancipation, a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles to star Smith and Kevin Hart, an adaptation of The Alchemist and a sequel to I Am Legend.
None of those projects are very far along in their development. Hart said in mid-2021 that he and Smith are both still "trying to figure out" the Planes, Trains and Automobiles remake.
He told Forbes, "Right now, it's on the table. The world of development is a long one and we know that the IP is there. Everybody was willing to let us get into it, but we've got to crack the code on what the story is."
