This could be a late entry for the upcoming Best Picture Oscar race.
Following the events at the 2022 Academy Awards - forever and always at this point to be known as The Slap - there were some serious questions asked about the future of Will Smith's career.
In light of The Slap, many of his movies - including Bad Boys 4, Bright 2 and Fast & Loose - were reportedly put on hold indefinitely, while everyone tried to gauge if Smith's involvement in a big budget blockbuster would be toxic to the potential success of the project.
Another of those movies was Emancipation, which has just released its first trailer, and could very well be a late-entry for the 2023 Best Picture and, potentially, Best Actor... an award that, due to The Slap, he is actually banned from collecting in person for the next decade.
In the movie, Smith plays Peter, a runaway slave who forges through the swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey to escape the plantation owners that nearly killed him.
During the movie's first public screening earlier this week, Smith said "Throughout my career, I’ve turned down many films that were set in slavery. I never wanted to show us like that. And then this picture came along. And this is not a film about slavery. This is a film about freedom. This is a film about resilience. This is a film about faith."
The movie co-stars Ben Foster and Grant Harvey, written by Bill Collage (Exodus: Gods and Kings), and directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day).
Emancipation will launch on Apple TV+ on Friday, 9 December, and may also have a limited cinematic run in Ireland from Friday, 2 December.
Clip via Apple TV
