At the end of the 90s, Will Smith’s career was at its peak. He stormed the charts with several songs during this decade and, in addition to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he was able to make money with films such as Bad Boys and Men in Black also became an acting icon. But when he Leading role in Matrix He turned it down and put a damper on his career, because he chose a huge flop instead.
Flop instead of Matrix: Will Smith didn’t want to be the alien guy
You might think that Will Smith was blinded by his fame. After Bad Boys and Independence Day, he felt like he could do no wrong. When he was offered Men in Black, he initially wanted to turn it downHe feared that otherwise he would “Alien movie types” Only Steven Spielberg himself was able to convince him to sign. The actor explained this during a visit to Kevin Hart’s talk show Hart to Heart, as Business Insider writes. And as we know, the legendary director was right.
It seems that Smith had learned nothing from this experience, as he also turned down the next sci-fi film, The Matrix – and this time he went through with it. Huge success and cult He had no idea at the time that he would become the director. Instead, Will Smith decided to Wild Wild Westwhich became the biggest flop of his career, explains Slash Film .
The fact that he regrets this decision today is also evident in a short interview shared by Entertainment Weely. Will Smith was asked what advice he would give his younger self if he could visit an earlier set:
I would go back to Wild Wild West and I would say, ‘Asshole, why didn’t you do The Matrix?’
You can find the relevant interview on YouTube .
The pitch for sci-fi cult film Matrix was too abstract for Will Smith
In a video on his YouTube channel, Will Smith revealed, why he rejected MatrixIn it, he talks about his concerns about becoming an “Alien film guy” and also what the Wachowski siblings’ pitch looked like at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2szuXKgL8
The main focus of the directors was probably the then newly developed camera technologywhich made The Matrix famous. Thanks to the 360° cameras, the filmmakers were able to freeze time in the film and have the actors stop in the air mid-jump.
Since Lilly and Lana Wachowski had only made one feature film at the time, their reputation was not yet strong enough to hire Will Smith for this abstract pitch to convince.
This DeepFake video shows what Will Smith could have looked like as Neo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h-yy3h1u04
At the end of the video, Will at least appears somewhat conciliatory and praises the performance of Keanu Reeves and Laurence FishburneWill Smith consoles himself with the thought that the film might work better this way than if he had played Neo.