Will Smith drops out of talks for 'Dumbo', 'Bad Boys for Life' back on track

Image from Oxygen

By Darian Scalamoni

            It wasn’t long for these talks to break down into a non-picture deal. It was just about a month ago that Will Smith and Tom Hanks were in talks to join the Dumbo live-action remake set to be directed by Tim Burton but a new report from Collider states that scheduling and salary issues have caused Smith to drop the talks to star in the film. This will put the third film in the Bad Boys franchise back on track for its release.

            With talks falling through on Dumbo, Disney is aggressively trying to get the live-action remake of the 1941 animated classic started. No news has been provided on who the studio is targeting next to take the role they had in mind for Smith which was the role of the “father whose children fall in love with the titular elephant at the circus.” Bad Boys for Life, the third installment in the mega-popular action franchise will be released on November 9^th, 2018 and is now the only movie Smith is attached to that he’s yet to film. Bad Boys 4 was originally supposed to be released in 2019 but now the status for that movie is TBD.

            Smith was seen last year in the DCEU ensemble film, Suicide Squad in which he played the anti-hero, Deadshot. He was also in Collateral Beauty (and quite frankly the best part of the film), but has the Netflix movie, Bright on the docket that is a sci-fi/fantasy crime film that also stars Joel Edgerton and is directed by David Ayer. Hopefully Disney will be able to start casting Dumbo sooner rather than later!