(Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
Apple Studios has secured global rights to Will Smith’s slave drama Emancipation, in a historic festival acquisition deal worth over $100 million.
Based on a true story, the movie follows Smith as a slave named Peter who flees a Louisiana plantation and must outsmart his captors on a journey North, where he joins the Union Army.
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The story of Peter made headlines in 1863 when a photo taken of him during an Army medical examination was published.
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“It’s rare to have a film that, on the entertainment side, has action that I’ve never seen before, real action, a guy running through the swamps for his life, wrestling with alligators and snakes, being chased by hounds, then joining the Civil War, fighting against the Confederate army.”
Fuqua told Deadline that the image of Peter’s back “hit my heart and my soul in so many ways that are impossible to convey.”
