Less than a year after the scandal caused by Will Smith’s slap at the Oscars, Apple announced on Monday the release in December of its new film “Emancipation”, with the actor in the lead.

 

Hollywood professionals were betting on a postponement of this historical movie about slavery, because of the smell of sulfur that emanates from Mr. Smith since his slap last March on the host of the Oscars, the comedian Chris Rock.

A widely condemned slip, which earned him a 10-year ban from the ceremony. Despite the controversy, Apple will release “Emancipation” in U.S. theaters on December 2, before a release on its Apple TV+ streaming platform the following week.

 

The timing allows the company to nominate the film for the upcoming Oscars, just after becoming the first streaming platform to be awarded the Best Picture statuette at the last ceremony with its feature film “CODA.”

 

Smith has been keeping a low profile since the last Oscars, when he won Best Actor for his performance in “The Williams Method,” minutes after slapping Chris Rock, who had mocked his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia. The former “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” publicly apologized shortly after the incident.

In July, he also posted a video on social networks, proposing a meeting with the comedian. The 54-year-old actor resigned from the Academy of Oscars. The Academy banned him from the ceremony for 10 years, but there is nothing to prevent him from being nominated for the competition.

 

His Oscar for best actor was not withdrawn despite the scandal. In “Emancipation”, he plays a runaway slave in the swamps of Louisiana, with the hope of reaching the North Country, synonymous with freedom for African-Americans in the United States of the nineteenth century. The feature film was directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose film “Training Day” (2001) won Denzel Washington the Oscar for best actor.

 

“Emancipation” was originally supposed to be shot in Georgia, but the production was relocated to Louisiana after the adoption of a controversial law by this state in the American South, which according to several NGOs aimed to discourage voting by African-Americans.