Emancipation is a 2022 American historical action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by William N. Collage. The film stars Will Smith and Ben Foster. Emancipation had its first screening in Washington, D.C. on October 1, 2022.
Will Smith stars in the new Apple TV+ film Emancipation, which recounts the story of a man named Peter, who provided visual proof of the brutality of slavery in a widely circulated photograph
In the fallout of Smith’s smack of the comedian, the fate of Emancipation – a US$120-million runaway slave thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua – had been uncertain. One of Apple’s most high-profile productions yet, the film had once been expected to be an Oscar contender this year. But an awards-season rollout of a film headlined by Smith, whom the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years, has obvious complications.
Nevertheless, Apple TV+ said Monday that it will debut Emancipation on December 2 in theatres and begin streaming it December 9.
Over the weekend, Apple and the NAACP held the first screening of the film in Washington as part of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Legislative Conference. Smith attended the screening and spoke on stage.
The release of Emancipation will pose the biggest test yet of how eager moviegoers are for a movie headlined by Smith, an actor who has generated more than US$6.5 billion in worldwide box office. Still, the brief exclusive run in theatres will also mean Emancipation, like Apple’s best picture-winning CODA, will be seen primarily in homes.
Regardless, the streamer isn’t shying away from its star. A black-and-white profile of Smith’s face, with a chain around his neck, adorns the movie poster.
In the film, Smith plays a man named Peter who escapes from slavery in Louisiana. It was inspired by the 1863 photos of a man known as ‘Whipped Peter’ that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly showing a Union Army medical exam of a mutilated man.
Peter didn't have a last name – slaves were not deemed important enough to be given one. Some accounts also claim that Peter was not his birth name, but one of his owners gave him rather than his birth name, Gordon, to further take away his humanity.
When he finally found safety behind Union lines, Peter told soldiers how he had made the daring escape after being brutally whipped by the plantation overseer, a man called Arroyo Carrier.
According to a December 1863 article in the New York Daily Tribune, Peter told the Union troops: "I don't remember the whipping.
"I was two months in bed sore from the whipping and salty brine Overseer put on my back. By and by my sense began to come – they said I was sort of crazy."
As soon as he had recovered, he and three other enslaved Africans escaped by cover of night.
But one of them was caught and murdered by slave hunters who came in pursuit of Lyon's "property".
Peter and his companion survived by rubbing their bodies with onions they had had the foresight to stuff into his pockets to throw off the bloodhounds tracking them.
Only after fleeing more than 40 miles did they reach Union soldiers of the XIX Corps stationed in Baton Rouge, the capital of the state of Louisiana, where they wept with joy as they were greeted by Black men in uniform.
The white soldiers who inspected Peter were horrified when they saw his wounds, with a witness telling the Daily Tribune: "He pulled down the pile of dirty rages that half concealed his back.
"It sent a thrill of horror to every white person present, but the few Blacks who were waiting paid but little attention to the sad spectacle, such terrible scenes being painfully familiar to them all."
The film had originally been planned to shoot in Georgia before Fuqua and Smith moved the production to New Orleans in response to Georgia’s then-newly enacted laws restricting voting access.
Emancipation was shot in the summer of 2021. Until the slap, its release had been expected in 2022. Smith resigned before he could be banned by the academy, but remains eligible for an Oscar nomination.
“My actions at the 94th Academy Awards presentation were shocking, painful, and inexcusable,” he said.
Since the incident, Smith has largely stayed out the public eye. In late July, he gave his most extensive comments about the incident in a video posted to social media in which he apologised to Rock, who had made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, Smith’s wife.
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