Netflix
Netflix Has Cancelled Will Smith’s ‘Bright’ Sequel And Nat Geo Project
National Geographic has also delayed production on Pole to Pole.
The upcoming Will Smith movies have reportedly been shelved after the Aladdin star stormed the Oscars stage and slapped Chris Rock over making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. Yet again, the King Richard actor is canceled by Netflix from his 2017 action film titled “Bright.”
Similarly, his National Geographic nature series “Pole to Pole” has been paused until fall 2022.
Notably, the series followed the 53-Year-Old star to the North and South Poles and was set to begin filming in three weeks. According to a Bloomberg source, Lucas Shaw, Smith’s 2017 sci-fi action thriller “Bright,” directed by David Ayer, was canceled because he had slugged Chris Rock during last month’s Academy Awards show.
Additional projects that have been smacked down also include a movie for Sony, now delayed, and another Netflix project for the “Fast and Loose.”
The original film Bright starred Smith as Daryl Ward, an LAPD detective in a world where magic is real and humans coexist with various mystical creatures. One of such creatures is Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton), who became the country’s first orc police officer and partners with Ward to protect an elf girl and the magic wand in her possession.
This news comes as Netflix was in the midst of finding a new director for the film after David Leitch left the film ahead of the Academy Awards.
Reportedly, Louis Leterrier, known as the incredible Hulk, has entered negotiations to replace Ayer as the director of Bright 2 in 2020. Ayer will stay as a producer and work on the script with Evan Spiliotopoulous and T.S. Nowlin. However, the first film garnered negative reviews when it aired on Netflix over three years ago, and despite that, Netflix still released an anime spinoff last October.
On the other hand, Smith has since resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science after the Oscars incident.
He was then officially banned from attending the ceremony for 10years. He has since faced additional consequences, including his fourth entry in the Bad Boys franchise being put on hold. Right after the slap, Rock reportedly declined to file a police report but had said he was still processing what happened on the night while speaking to the audience at his sold-out comedy show held in Boston.
