Apple has purchased yet another big movie, and they’re paying a huge fee for it. Deadline reports that the iPhone company has purchased Will Smith’s new movie, Emancipation, for $120 million USD.
The site reported that seven different companies bid on Emancipation after it was put up for sale, with Warner Bros. and Apple finishing as the final two serious candidates before Apple won out.
Emancipation stars Will Smith as a runaway slave from Louisiana who embarks on a perilous journey to the North while he’s tracked down by “cold-blooded hunters.” The film is directed by Antoine Fuqua, who made the Oscar-winning 2001 crime drama Training Day starring Denzel Washington.
Deadline also reported that Emancipation writer William N. Collage is being paid a seven-figure rate for the script. The movie is expected to be released in theatres and then on Apple TV+.
Emancipation is just the latest big get for Apple, as the company’s Apple Studios division also recently acquired the Martin Scorsese-directed movie Killers of the Flower Moon for $180 million with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro to star. Apple also recently bought the Tom Hanks World War II movie Greyhound, which was scheduled to come to theatres but moved to Apple TV+ for its July 10 debut.
Emancipation is inspired by the 1863 photograph, The Scourged Back, which further illuminated the brutality of slavery in America. Fuqua, the director of Emancipation, told Deadline, “You can’t fix the past, but you can remind people of the past and I think we have to, in an accurate, real way.”
“We all have to look for a brighter future for us all, for everyone. That’s one of the most important reasons to do things right now, is show our history. We have to face our truth before we can move forward.”
Production on Emancipation is expected to start in early 2021.