Will Smith may have turned down the title role in Django Unchained, but it seems he’ll yet get to turn a slave story into a big-budget action movie.
According to Deadline, Smith is attached to star in Emancipation, an action-thriller from Assassin’s Creed writer Bill Collage. Antoine Fuqua is set to direct this tale of an escaped enslaved man fighting his way north through man and nature alike. It’s loosely based on the story of Gordon—better known as “Whipped Peter”—whose horrifically scarred back made for an iconic, indelible image of the brutality of slavery. So Big Willie’s end-credits rap better be pretty damn sullen.
