Jamie Foxx Looming Large In 'Django Unchained'

By MIKE FLEMING | Wednesday June 22, 2011 @ 5:51pm EDTTags: Django Unchained, Film Casting, Jamie Foxx, Quentin Tarantino, Sony Pictures, The Weinstein Co


BREAKING: Quentin Tarantino has made his choice and negotiations will begin for Jamie Foxx to play the title character in Django Unchained. Tarantino's next film will be distributed domestically by The Weinstein Company and overseas by Sony Pictures. Production begins November.
Foxx will join Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson in a Sergio Leone-style spaghetti Western that Tarantino wrote and has set in Mississippi during slavery. No deal has been made yet, but it shouldn't take long. While the early focus had Will Smith the likely participant, Deadline told you on June 7 that those talks had gone south, and we were first to identify Foxx as a prime contender for the role along with Idris Elba and Chris Tucker.
The choice of Foxx is an inspired one. After transitioning from comedies to dramas, Foxx proved himself a formidable physical presence in films like Any Given Sunday, Collateral, Jarhead and Law Abiding Citizen, and has shown his acting chops there and in his Oscar-winning turn in Ray. Those facets are prerequisites for the role of Django. And Foxx can ride a horse, too.
Django is a slave who's liberated by a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter and taught the tricks of the trade by his mentor. Django's major goal in life is to recover his wife, and to do it he needs to get past the villainous ranch owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), who runs Candyland, a despicable club and plantation in Mississippi where female slaves are exploited as sex objects and males are pitted against each other in "mandingo"-style death matches. Candie is a slave's worst nightmare, and that is where Django's wife Broomhilda is an abused slave.
Waltz, who won the Oscar for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, is locked as the bounty hunter and DiCaprio signed on earlier this month. Tarantino's Pulp Fiction star Jackson is also expected to play the role of Stephen, Candie's valet who keeps the slaves in line at Candie's residence. Tarantino turned in his script in late April to The Weinstein Company's Harvey Weinstein, and Sony Pictures signed on shortly after to distribute in offshore territories.
Django Unchained is being produced by Tarantino's Pulp Fiction producer Stacey Sher, along with Pilar Savone and Reginald Hudlin. Weinstein, Michael Shamberg and line producer Jim Skotchdopole are exec producing.

 

damn i was hoping to see idris elba on this

 

Jamie Foxx is a lousy actor, he is at best a great impersonator and stand up comic. He is made for Tv sitcom. Just coz he got lucky and won the oscar doesn't make him an Oscar caliber leading actor.

 

Wow, look at Chris Tucker trying to fight his way back up the ranks. Hopefully he'll find himself a good role here soon. I like Jamie Foxx, I think he's a relatively solid actor. This could be the role that really sells him to more audiences. It was just a voiceover but I liked his part in the animated movie 'Rio' if that counts for anything lol...

 

Got-damn!!! The last thing I want to see is another Black-people-as-slaves flick. I hope this shit tanks big time!

The Kid Rasta

 

Jamie Foxx isn't that bad an actor, but I'd prefer to see Idris Elba working with Tarantino.

Not sure about this flick, but I love Tarantino, so I'm excited to see how it will turn out (regardless of which actors are in it).

 

Kid,I believe you. This flick is going to cringe any Black person.

 

I'm gonna reserve judgment before I actually "see" the movie for myself. I remember when "Black Snake Moan" came out to the same kind of criticism a few years ago and I actually kind of dug it once I sat down and watched it. This topic is a little bit more risqué so we’ll see.

 

It might not. Don't judge it until you've seen it (or at least until it's out there for others to see). It may surprise you....it may not too, but it's not even been made yet so how can anyone know??

 

Jamie Foxx is not an actor he is a stand up comic/comedian. Idris Alba on other hand is a classically trained solid actor.

 

This is ridiculous. Slave movies are extremely rare because white America is more comfortable displaying the evils of other countries (Germany/Nazis/Holocaust) than they are of the horrific past of their own nation. That is why there hasn't been many Civil Rights films and that's also why there hasn't been many slave-related major motion pictures. So to act as if the history of Hollywood motion pictures, or recent Hollywood films, is crowded with such movies is ridiculous. Frankly I cringe at black folks who don't want no part of seeing the past portrayed more on the big screen. Jewish folks certainly don't allow the world to forget the Holocaust.

I despise Foxx although I concede that he has talent. Give me a guy like Chiwetel Ejiofor over that clown anyday though. A phony jackass is all he is. Anyway it seems more and more that the Django role is underdeveloped compared to his white mentor. We'll see.

Thank God Chris Tucker didn't get the part. Did he think he could hide for fifteen years (outside of Rush Hour films) and then get rewarded with a movie like this. That coward has been too afraid to do ANYTHING outside of Rush Hour for all this time so it is perfect karma that he lost out on a major part in a major film like this.

 

A ridiculous comment since he is and has been a working actor for quite a few years now, but I'll assume you're talking about talent rather than actual work. I think he's an ok actor. He was great in The Soloist especially. But I do agree that Idris is better. In so many ways.

 

Just coz I wear a short and a wife beater and play 3 on 3 pick up ball and the crowd at a park give me a sympathy standing ovaition doesn't make me a basket ball player, lol. :smt005


Yeah, yeah, I know Foxx has been in movies, he is better off on a TV sitcom.

 

That doesn't even make sense to me. LOL

Perhaps it's because I have never seen him in any standup or comedy that I don't see him the same way. I've only ever seen him in movies. So, he is...regardless of what you want to believe, an actor.

 

He is a great stand up comic/radio host and does well for low budget Tv sitcom, that's about it. You should check out youtube vids of his IN living color days, it appears he did good there and was funny but as an Actor, nah, just got lucky with the movie Ray, he aint no actor.

 

Dude, I can see what you're saying if this is a historical drama based even loosely on fact, but this movie is NOT. This is not the Amistad or Malcolm X, this is a pure fictional fantasy from the man who gave us black men being raped onscreen, grossly over-exageratered amputations, and not to mention the overruse and quite redundant use of the n-word all for "shock-value" in his films.

ANd what's more shocking is that black people will sit through his work that will protray this onscreen:

"....Candyland, a despicable club and plantation in Mississippi where female slaves are exploited as sex objects and males are pitted against each other in "mandingo"-style death matches."

Turentino is basically making fun of slavery, the 300 year holocaust of African-Americans, and yet we are going to sit of here and defend this movie!?! Ain't no way in hell will you see a movie where white women will be sexually exploited AND racially abused at the same time by black men. Even if it was about slavery of whites from the Black Moors. White America will DEFINITELY cringe at that. Yet blacks want to defend a movie that is making a mockery of slavery and black slaves in general!? Are u kidding me!?

 

I wouldn't call him lousy but I agree with your premise. Akin to Ice cube being an "actor"

 

Alright if that is where you were coming from then that's cool. I can understand that. What I thought you guys meant was that you cringed at the thought of the issue of slavery being addressed in movies. My bad.

To be perfectly honest I have no desire to see this movie in large part because of the issues you listed. Foxx's casting didn't help either.

 

The evil plantation owner Calvin Candie, according to the agency WME will be played by Leonardo DiCaprio, as the "...charming but ruthless proprietor of Candyland..." The slave master is a so-called "Hollywood Heartthrob", interesting choice a slave master that most or many women probably find attractive. Not sure we need to confuse people further by providing a reason to empathize with slave masters or in this case even desire the slave master.

The lack of real knowledge about American slavery is bad enough. There are High School teachers in the South that still say to students that slaves where treated well by their masters.

I do not mind movies about slavery at all, as long as it treats the subject for what it was. However in this day and age I think African-Americans can tell this story ourselves just fine or even produce real slave narratives from the mouths of slaves themselves. I think my ancestors deserve respect for what they endured.

Do we need White men to continue to tell the story of us?

Do we need White men to re-write our history or use it to entertain the masses?

I understand that this is 'just' a movie to some people (and one that has not been made yet). I will never allow someone else to define me as a Man, nor can someone alter the truth that I already know. But the fact that so many in our world refuse to deal with reality or seek truth and instead prefer fantasy and entertainment will always irk me.

 

People are getting way too upset over something that hasn't even been made yet. I'm saving my judgement for when it's made and released.