Jamie Foxx Refuses To Release A Film He Directed Due To ‘Sensitive Corners’
A Jamie Foxx-directed comedy may never see the light of day, the actor says due to the “sensitive corners” comedy has in place.
During an interview with CinemaBlend, the actor shared it’s been “tough” to release All-Star Weekend due to the current state of comedy.
“It’s been tough with the lay of the land when it comes to comedy,” he told the publication.
“We’re trying to break open the sensitive corners where people go back to laughing again… We hope to keep them laughing and run them right into ‘All-Star Weekend’ because we were going for it. I called Robert, and I said, ‘I need you to play a Mexican.’ I said, ‘S***, you played the Black dude [in ‘Tropic Thunder’] and you killed that shit.’ We got to be able to do characters.”
The film stars Jeremy Piven, Robert Downey Jr., Benicio del Toro, Gerard Butler, and Eva Longoria and follows Foxx and Piven as two best friends who win tickets to the annual NBA event with their characters taking a road trip to Los Angeles to attend the All-Star Game, but their journey is upended by a handful of wacky characters.
Downey was set to play a Mexican character while one of Foxx’s characters was allegedly a white racist cop.
Piven was a guest on Gary Owen’s show Get Some with Gary Owen and revealed the film will never be released due to Foxx “never” wanting to release it.
“It’s one of those things where Foxx is probably the most talented guy I’ve ever been around, known, heard of,” he began.
“He’s the funniest guy in the room. He can sing. There’s nothing Foxx can’t do. I had the time of my life… Foxx is hard on himself. He’s one of these dudes, you know, he wants it to be perfect, so he’s been holding onto this thing for five years.”
While we may never see this film, you can see Foxx in the new Netflix film Day Shift.