Following the slap heard round the world, Will Smith has lost some big projects, been banned from the Academy Awards for a decade, and resigned from the Academy in disgrace. But it’s not over, and studios that may be looking to save a little bit of money are using Smith as a reason relieve themselves of potentially expensive burdens.
According to Bloomberg, Netflix has given the axe to Bright 2, the sequel to their surprising hit fantasy/cop drama starring Smith and Joel Edgerton as cops in a world shared by humans, orcs, faeries, and more. The film, which had a script by problematic writer Max Landis, was a big hit for Netflix even though critics massacred it savagely. Me, I thought it was alright and basically the same cop movie director David Ayer always makes, except with weird monsters.
Ayer was going to be replaced on the sequel by Louis Leterrier, best known for directing The Incredible Hulk and Now You See Me. Fans of this universe will have to settle for the anime spinoff Bright: Samurai Soul, which premiered last October on Netflix.
This all happens as Netflix is dealing with a raft of bad issues all at once: a loss of 200,000 subscribers, a 35% dip in stock price, and reports about its massive spending. The streamer plans to counter this with a new lower-tiered subscription package supported by ads. However, if they need to cut costs, Bright 2 is a good film to do away with. Nobody was really begging for it.
Meanwhile, Walt Disney’s National Geographic is considering a similar fate for Pole to Pole, a nature doc that would send Smith to the North and South Poles. Smith has done two prior nature docs for NatGeo, including the incredibly popular Welcome to Earth which debuted last December.