4 Canceled Steven Spielberg & Will Smith Movies (& Why They Didn’t Happen)

Will Smith and Steven Spielberg have tried hard to make a movie together, but for various reasons, none of their projects have worked out.

Summary

• Despite both achieving box office hits with wide appeal, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith have never worked on a film together.

• Will Smith and Steven Spielberg attempted to work together on four films, but they all failed during the development process.

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It’s surprising that Will Smith and Steven Spielberg have never worked on a film together, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t tried. Both the actor and the director are among the best in their respective professions. Will Smith is an Academy Award-winning actor who has earned billions of dollars at the box office playing charismatic leads in action and adventure films. Steven Spielberg’s films have also won several awards, and few filmmakers are better at summer blockbusters than the Indiana Jones director. Spielberg always makes high-concept movies about heroic characters and often casts the world’s biggest stars.

That’s exactly the kind of brand Will Smith built for himself throughout the ’90s and ’00s, starring in films like Men in black, I am a legend, and I robot. In that sense, it is surprising that Smith and Spielberg never collaborated. Since both have wide appeal and their films generate hundreds of millions of dollars, a collaboration between the actor and director would be a big deal. However, the duo attempted to work together on four films, but they all failed during the development process. It seems like Will Smith and Steven Spielberg working together just shouldn’t be like that.

Related: What does Will Smith’s Oscar ban mean? Can he still win another Oscar?

4 The brand

The brand It was a spec script, meaning it was written with the intention of selling it to a studio. The script was written by Rob Liefield, who is now best known for creating Deadpool. In the late 1990s, both Smith and Spielberg showed great interest in The brandwhich was about the bearers of the mysterious “Mark” throughout history, and the first 20 pages of the script follow Hitler and the Nazis in search of the Mark, as the dictator could have used it for evil (via of It’s not good news?).

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While it is still difficult to understand exactly what The brand This is, it sounds very similar to a Indiana Jones movie, especially considering the mysterious MacGuffin and the involvement of the Nazis, making it perfect for Spielberg. Smith was in talks to play the lead role, and it would have been his first film after the terribly received. wild wild west. A high-concept action-adventure film directed by Spielberg would have been the perfect comeback. According Liefield (via X), after three months of negotiations between the three parties, an agreement was reached.

Liefield had written the script and was attached to produce the film directed by Spielberg and starring Smith. The writer was invited for a few celebratory drinks, but when he arrived, he was greeted by “gloomy faces“At the celebration party, Liefield explained, “Will stands up and pats me on the back. ‘Steven is out, there were points of production and merchandise that we didn’t agree on… Everything will be fine.‘”Creative differences often occur between actors and directors, but a film that collapses on merchandise makes The brands development hell which is much more unfortunate.

3 harvey

Steven Spielberg had a great interest in making the strange film. Harveywhich came into the development process and had Will Smith lined up to play the lead role (via The Playlist). The project was a reinvention of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, written by Mary Chase. The play had already been adapted in 1950 and the story follows Elwood P. Dowd, a man whose best friend is a 6-foot-3-and-a-half-inch invisible rabbit named Harvey. While Elwood’s family wants him to seek help, it turns out that his belief in Harvey ultimately has a positive effect on the people he meets.

Not much has been revealed about why the project fell through, other than Spielberg reportedly never found a lead actor he was happy with (via Empire). That suggests Spielberg might not have been entirely happy with Smith taking on the role. The director also approached Tom Hanks, but clearly that didn’t come to fruition either. Robert Downey Jr. was another option, but the Iron Man The actor and Spielberg apparently disagreed on the film. Either way, Smith was one of the actors vying to take the lead role in this strange film adaptation.

2 old

older boy It would have been a remake of the classic 2003 South Korean film of the same name, and Steven Spielberg and Will Smith teamed up for the project in 2008 (via Collider). The film follows Oh Dae-su, who is imprisoned in a cell for 15 years, not knowing who he is or what the intentions of his captor are. Spielberg isn’t the most obvious candidate for a remake older boy, as the filmmaker is best known for his maudlin sentimentality. Even when he makes a film with darker themes, those themes include more uplifting moments. That would have been impossible for this new version, since older boy It’s a morbid, pitch-black thriller.

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According to Mark Protosevich (via IndieWire), who wrote I’m legend and was hired to write the script for the older boy remake, the development of the film never went beyond simple meetings in which they vaguely talked about the remake. In late 2009, a year after Smith and Spielberg’s collaboration was announced, it was revealed that the remake was officially canceled because Dreamworks was unable to obtain the rights. It seems a little premature for Steven Spielberg to announce a movie that he hadn’t even gotten the rights to, and if he had tried to get them first, a year of meetings could have been avoided.

However, the Hollywood remake of older boy It finally arrived in 2013, although starring Josh Brolin and directed by Spike Lee. Unfortunately, the year 2013 older boy The remake failed at the box office and was received negatively. Steven Spielberg’s vision was probably very different.

1 The trial of the Chicago 7

Steven Spielberg almost succeeded Trial of the Chicago 7or as it was called during its development process in the late 2000s, Chicago 7. The filmmaker even hired famous writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Born on the Fourth of July) to write the script. Spielberg was passionate about the project because he believed the trial was politically relevant at the time due to the Iraq War, and the director expressed urgency, trying to get the film made in time for the 2008 US presidential election.

Will Smith had been cast as Bobby Seale in the 2000 version of Chicago 7, and would have been sharing screen time with Heath Ledger, whom Spielberg was considering for Tom Hayden. While the script was being written, Spielberg urged Smith to reserve specific dates for the shooting schedule (via Collider). Smith explained: “When Steve is ready, he will send it. I don’t know the details, the story, anything, but he told me the filming dates, so I can be free to do it. It’s not 100% sure yet, but I’m confident.“

Spielberg’s film failed to take off due to the 2007 Writers’ Guild of America strike, meaning Will Smith and Steven Spielberg’s collaborations have suffered a 0% success rate. The trial of the Chicago 7 It was finally made in 2020, but Sorkin directed it instead of Spielberg. The film also featured Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, who was also attached to play the character 10 years earlier.

Sources: Isn’t that good news? Rob Liefield (via X), The Playlist, Collider, Collider, IndieWire

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