Actors Will Smith (L) and Antoine Fuqua.
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‘Emancipation’, a slave drama directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Will Smith, will no longer be filmed in the state of Georgia due to a new suffrage signed on March 26 by Gov. Brian Kemp.
“At this moment, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and trying to remove remnants of institutional racism in order to bring about true racial justice,” Smith and Fuqua said in a joint statement on Monday.
“We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enforces regressive voting laws designed to restrict voter access,” they said. “The new voting laws in Georgia are reminiscent of the voting barriers that were adopted at the end of the Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Unfortunately, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state.”
This is the first film to take production out of state due to legislation.
The new law, which includes a restriction on subjects, makes it a crime to provide food or water to voters set up outside polling stations, and requires mandatory proof of identity for the absence of votes and creates greater legislative control on how the election is conducted. Opponents say these provisions may deprive people of color out of proportion.
Since 2008, the enticing tax incentives have made the state a production center for film and television, especially for Netflix, HBO Max, Disney’s Marvel movies and TV shows, and The CW. Georgia has also developed infrastructure for productions with large budgets and is home to an extremely skilled staff of crew members, craftsmen and technicians.
Hollywood has been debating how to deal with this most recent situation in Georgia. Some called for a production boycott, while others worried that production from the state would do more harm than good. For the most part, studios commenting on the new law condemned it, but did not commit to halting production.
“Emancipation,” which Fuqua and Smith produce for Apple Studios, centers around Whipped Peter, a slave who freed himself from a southern plantation and joined the Union Army. He is best known as the subject of a series of photographs showing the shockingly cruel scars on his back as a slave.
It is unclear what the financial toll will be for moving the production of the project out of Georgia, but if Fuqua and Smith, who are both black and big players in Hollywood and internationally, support it, it could put more pressure on other productions to to leave the state. .