Oh how the mighty have fallen. The Wachiowskis have just told the Wall Street Journal they’ll probably never get to make a big budget movie again, and the interview was obviously conducted before Jupiter Ascending came out, and subsequently went down the toilet at the box office.
Now Will Smith tells the Daily Beast he was “broken” over the disaster of After Earth. “After the failure of After Earth, a thing got broken in my mind,” he said. He joked that his greatest fear was a movie “opening at number 2. It has been an absolute necessity that the movie be a blockbuster, but I think I’m going to start moving out of that and finding more danger in my artistic choices.”
When After Earth tanked, he also learned a valuable lesson. “I was like, oh, wow- I’m still alive. I still am me, even though the movie didn’t open no.1. Wait, I can still get hired on another movie. All of those things in my mind and my entire ‘Mr. July,’ ‘Big Willie Weekdn’ ‘no.1,’ ‘8 in a row’ – all of those things got collapsed and I realized I was still a good person.”
When John Travolta had his huge comeback with Pulp Fiction, it proved that practically anybody can come back. An A-list star can usually survive a handful of flops before their career’s in trouble, and while Smith certainly took a big hit with After Earth, we have the feeling audience still like him enough that they’ll welcome him back in the right vehicle. (Come on Will, you know the ID4 sequels beckon, jump on board and kick E.T.’s ass again.)
