After numerous production setbacks, Will Smith’s slap heard round the world, and a packed release schedule from Apple, audiences can finally get a first look at “Emancipation.” Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Smith, “Emancipation” is written by William N. Collage.
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The film tells the story of Peter, a slave who survives a brutal beating and, in its aftermath, escapes the swamps of Louisiana and joins the Union Army. Peter is famous for having had pictures taken of his back at a Union encampment in Baton Rouge in 1863, 10 days after escaping a plantation. The pictures display the wounds he sustained at the hands of his former master, running up and down his back. With his arm on his hip, the expression on his face emotionless, the scars jump off the one-dimensional surface, condemning the barbaric institution of slavery via the then-young medium of photography.
These pictures would serve as a rallying cry for the abolitionist cause during the Civil War and would be used to refute the southern economic arguments made in favor of slavery. They also foreshadowed mass media’s importance during wartime and the ability for media to shift public opinion and spur action, as has been the case with pictures and videos of Emmett Till, Rodney King, George Floyd, and countless others.
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Back in mid-2020, Apple outbid Universal Pictures, Lionsgate, MGM, and Warner Bros. for the rights to “Emancipation,” dishing out $120 million. The film had its first audience on October 1, as it screened at the NAACP’s Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Legislative Conference in Washington D.C. The screening was followed by a conversation between Fuqua, Smith, and Mary Elliot, curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“Emancipation” will be released in theaters on December 2 before hitting Apple TV+ on December 9.