Can Will Smith’s ‘Emancipation’ Be This Year’s ‘Million Dollar Baby’ Or ‘Last Samurai’?

In a surprise move akin to Netflix’sNFLX
debut of The Cloverfield Paradox (during which they dropped a trailer on Super Bowl Sunday and released the movie as soon as the game ended), AppleAAPL
TV+ has offered the first trailer to Antoine Fuqua and William N. Collage’s Emancipation. The visually intriguing action-drama stars Will Smith as Peter (Smith), a runaway slave who joined up with the Union Army. The photos of his bare back, filled with gruesome scars from a near-fatal whipping at the hands of slaveowners, were a historical touchtone in convincing people that slavery was very bad. That’s a lesson that still needs to be taught (to adults more so than children), but I digress. Apple has announced that the film will play theatrically on December 2 and debut on Apple TV on December 9. So much for Will Smith being ‘canceled.’

Apple sees a window in the awards season, both in terms of theatrical releases (there’s little between Thanksgiving weekend and Avatar: The Way of Water on December 16) and surefire frontrunners for the Oscar. I’ve long argued that the blow-out success of Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai ($111 million domestic and $454 million worldwide in December 2003) shows that big movies can open in the usually vacant post-Thanksgiving weekend frame. I will be amused if this obviously less-commercial (Fuqua is not exactly known for holding back on explicit R-rated violence and punishing carnage) star vehicle again proves me relatively correct. Apple TV+ doesn’t have a vast subscriber base, so it could easily play in theaters and on Apple throughout the year-end season. Moreover, if we enter Thanksgiving weekend without a likely front runner, then Emancipation wants to be this year’s Million Dollar Baby.

That Clint Eastwood/Hillary Swank boxing drama was among the last big Oscar movies to debut, doing so to rave reviews at once propelling it to front-runner status. The film would earn $100 million domestically and $216 million worldwide on a $30 million budget while winning Best Picture, Best Actress and (for Morgan Freeman) Best Supporting Actor. Granted, such a last-minute game-changer is an exception to the rule, as was The Last Samurai, which reminds you how much of a force Warner Bros. can still be when they have a supportive leadership team. And, sure, Will Smith probably won’t win his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar, thanks to slapping Chris Rock during the last telecast and getting banned from attending for ten years. However, the film can still be in contention for awards, both for Smith and everyone else involved. It screened to decent buzz this weekend in DC.

Once again, despite months of “Why has Will Smith been canceled when this other celebrity still flourishes despite doing something much worse?!” online discourse, Smith hasn’t been penalized within the industry for his onstage assault and battery. Sony swears that Bad Boys 4 is still in development, as Bad Boys for Life opened 17 years after Bad Boys II. Netflix’s Fast & Loose was put on hold before the Oscars after David Leitch opted for Universal’s The Fall Guy. Smith is developing Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Brilliance as a franchise-friendly star vehicle for ParamountPARA
. And now Emancipation is getting a splashy theatrical release/awards season campaign despite the film being less of a shoo-in than it might have been before March 27, 2022. Even if it’s about getting the movie off the books, Apple has enough spare change to fake it and possibly still make it.

Fuqua generally makes top-shelf R-rated action movies in a PG-13 world. Even his PG-13 The Magnificent Seven remake was a genuinely underrated, righteously angry crowdpleaser. Even with the disturbing subject matter, I expect the $120 million-budgeted (I’m presuming folks got paid upfront instead of box office-related backend deals) Emancipation to still work as meat-and-potatoes entertainment. After the last year, I will laugh my ass off if A) Will Smith pulls a Tom Hanks and still wins back-to-back Oscars and B) Apple also repeats and wins Best Picture one year after Coda. Regardless, I’m sure the Golden Globes will shower the film with nominations just to set itself apart from its chief competition. Emancipation opens December 2, right alongside Universal’s R-rated ‘Die Hard with a Santa Claus’ actioner Violent Night (which hopes to mimic the relative success of Krampus in 2015). As always, we’ll see.