Will Smith famously turned down The Matrix when he publicly said he didn’t quite understand the concept, which can be understandable given it was revolutionary on a lot of concepts. The movie would go on to become a cultural milestone and it would work out for Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Ann Moss as they were immortalized in the techno-action-thriller. Smith has been vocal about his regret in turning it down and it even became a plot point in the music video for his latest “Beautiful Scars” single.
However, it turns out that Smith might just not be a good fit for alternate reality sci-fi films as, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the Fresh Prince revealed that he also turned down Christopher Nolan’s pitch for Inception. Smith was on the station KISS XTRA when he explained,
I don’t think I’ve ever said it publicly before, but I am going to say it now because we are opening up to one another. Chris Nolan brought me Inception first and I didn’t get it. I’ve never said that out loud. Now that I think about it, it’s those movies that go into those alternate realities they don’t pitch well. But I am hurt by those, too … It hurts too bad to talk about.”
Inception shares a bit of a motif with The Matrix where a group of characters must hook themselves up into a contraption in order to enter an alternate world. In The Matrix, it was a simulated computer program of our world, whereas in Inception, it was to enter into people’s dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio would end up starring in the Christopher Nolan film in his first summer blockbuster and it became a huge hit for the star and filmmaker. It would build Nolan’s reputation for skating the line between heady dramas and genre movies. Next up, for Nolan, he’s currently shooting The Odyssey with Matt Damon, which is said to be the first movie shot entirely in IMAX cameras.
When Universal Pictures officially announced the project last year, the studio described it as “a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology.”
