Subscribe on Patreon to support the show and get access to exclusive content from Awesome Movie Year, plus fellow podcasts Piecing It Together and All Rice No Beans, and music by David Rosen: Īll of the music in the episode is by David Rosen. “He said, ‘Do me a favor, don’t use your brain for this one, use my brain,'” Smith said of his conversation with Spielberg.Make sure to like Awesome Movie Year on Facebook at and follow us on Twitter can find Jason online at, on Facebook at, on Instagram at and on Twitter can find Josh online at, on Facebook at and on Twitter can find our producer David Rosen’s Piecing It Together Podcast at, on Twitter at the Popcorn & Puzzle Pieces Facebook Group at. He describes in the video how Steven Spielberg called him to convince him to do “Men in Black,” when he was worried about being pigeonholed as “the alien movie guy.” It did give us one of the great movie theme songs, however.Īlso Read: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence Announce 'Bad Boys for Life' Is Happeningīut it seems that Smith hasn’t always been the best judge of what projects to do… or not do. “The Matrix,” which came out in 1999, went on to gross $463.5 million at the worldwide box office and win four Academy Awards, while “Wild Wild West” grossed $222.1 million worldwide and was critically panned. Smith, at the time, was coming off the back-to-back successes of “Independence Day” ($817.4 million) and “Men in Black” ($589.4 million). In the video, Smith explained how the meeting went south for him and the pitch for the filmmakers’ vision didn’t make all that much sense to him. “But there’s a fine line in a pitch meeting between genius and what I experienced in the meeting.” “They came in and they made a pitch for ‘The Matrix’ and, as it turns out, they’re geniuses,” Smith said. It had been talked about in Hollywood for years, but earlier this week, Smith confirmed that he was pitched and, ultimately, turned down the role of Neo in “The Matrix.”Īlso Read: 'Aladdin': Here's the First Full Look at Will Smith's Genie (Video) If I had done it then Morpheus wouldn’t have been black because they were looking at Val Kilmer.” “But it ain’t like it would have been that. “This is one of them stories I’m not proud of, but it’s the truth,” Smith said in a video on his YouTube channel Wednesday. Will Smith wasn’t feeling the Wachowski’s pitch for “The Matrix,” so he dipped on the red and blue pill and opted to film “Wild Wild West” instead.

The wild west movie