Will Smith enters 2023 Oscar race with slavery drama Emancipation

After holding the film in limbo following Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in March, Apple will release Smith’s next big project this December

Will Smith is entering the 2023 Oscar race with his new slavery drama, Emancipation.

Having held the film in limbo following Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in March, Apple has announced it will now release the actor’s next big project this December.

In the aftermath of “the slap”, the awards fate of Emancipation – a runaway slave thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua costing $120m (£105m) – had been uncertain, given that Smith has been banned from attending the Academy Awards for 10 years.

Nevertheless, Apple TV+ said on Monday (3 October) that it will debut Emancipation on 2 December in cinemas and begin streaming it on 9 December.

Over the weekend, Apple and the NAACP held the first screening of the film in Washington, DC, as part of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Legislative Conference. Smith attended the screening and spoke on stage.

The release of Emancipation will pose the biggest test yet of how eager filmgoers are for a movie headlined by Smith.

In the film, Smith plays a man named Peter who escapes from slavery in Louisiana. It was inspired by the 1863 photos of a man known as “Whipped Peter” that first appeared in Harper's Weekly showing a Union Army medical exam of a mutilated man.

The film had originally been planned to shoot in Georgia before Fuqua and Smith moved the production to New Orleans in response to Georgia's then-newly enacted laws restricting voting access.

Emancipation was shot in the summer of 2021. Its release had originally been expected earlier this year.

Before Smith was banned by the Academy, the actor resigned his membership, saying: “My actions at the 94th Academy Awards presentation were shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”

Since then, Smith has largely stayed out the public eye. In late July, he gave his most extensive comments about the incident in a video posted to social media in which he apologised to Rock, who had made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Smith remains eligible for an Oscar nomination.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.