Actors Will Smith (L) and Antoine Fuqua.
Getty Images
“Emancipation,” a slave drama directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Will Smith, will no longer be shot in the state of Georgia due to a new voting law signed by Governor Brian Kemp on March 26th.
“Right now, the Nation is accepting its history and is trying to remove vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” Smith and Fuqua said in a joint statement Monday.
“We cannot consciously provide financial support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws designed to restrict voter access,” they said. “Georgia’s new voting laws are reminiscent of the voting impediments that were passed at the end of 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 its production out of the state because of this legislation.
The new law, which includes a restriction on unloading boxes, makes it a crime to provide food or water to voters lined up outside polling stations, requires mandatory proof of identity for absentee voting, and creates greater legislative control. on how elections are made. Opponents say these provisions will disproportionately disallow people of color.
Since 2008, tax incentives have made the state a hub for film and television production, especially for Netflix, HBO Max, the list of Marvel movies and TV shows, and The CW. Georgia has also developed infrastructure for large-budget productions and houses a tremendously skilled workforce of crew members, craftsmen and technicians.
Hollywood has been debating how to handle this latest situation in Georgia. Some have called for a boycott of production, while others worry that removing production from the state would do more harm than good. For the most part, studies that have commented on the new law have condemned it, but have not pledged to stop production.
“Emancipation,” which Fuqua and Smith produce for Apple Studios, centers around Whipped Peter, a slave who emancipated himself from a southern plantation and joined the Union Army. He is famous for being the subject of a series of photographs, showing the shocking and brutal scars of his back as a slave.
It is unclear what the financial toll will be to move production from the project out of Georgia, but the fact that Fuqua and Smith, who are black and protagonists in Hollywood and internationally, support the decision could put more pressure on others. productions to leave the state.