Here's every major movie role Will Smith turned down. There are few actors working today who can match Smith for his screen charisma and bankability. After beginning his career as a rapper in the mid-1980s, he's gone on to become the star of a beloved NBC sitcom (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), the king of '90s sci-fi blockbusters, and an actor who continues to shift back and forth between crowd-pleasing tentpoles and character-driven dramas with ease. Even in an era where brands and IP rule the box office, it's still a big deal whenever Smith signs on for a new film.
Like any artist, Smith has endured his fair share of up and downs in his career. After starring in a string of hits in the '90s, the actor suffered his first real blow with 1999's Wild Wild West, an expensive misfire that, on paper, had all the necessary ingredients to produce A Good Will Smith Movie (grand spectacle and a somewhat ridiculous premise), but lacked the execution necessary to make it work. Things went smoother for him in the 2000s, with Smith oscillating between studio movies geared to deliver exactly what audiences expect from his films (some more successfully than others) and independent projects showcasing more of his acting range. After taking a break to focus on his family from 2008 to 2012, he then attempted to get ahead of the curve by starring opposite his son Jaden in After Earth, a sci-fi adventure designed to launch a shared universe that could rival the MCU. Unfortunately, the movie fell pretty much flat on its face, however you choose to look at it.
Since then, Smith has more or less rebounded and continues to do what he does best, even landing the highest-grossing film of his career with 2019's Aladdin live-action remake. Still, it's interesting to look back at all the movies the actor specifically passed on headlining (as opposed to being briefly considered for or rejected from), and wonder how starring in them might've affected his career trajectory.
Boyz N the Hood
In 1991, John Singleton made his directorial debut with Boyz n the Hood, a critically-acclaimed coming of age drama partly inspired by his own experiences growing up in Los Angeles and moving to South Central to live with his father when he was 12 years old. During the film's casting process, Smith was a strong contender to play the young adult version of protagonist Jason "Tre" Styles III. However, due to his commitment to starring in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (which had only begun its run the year before Singleton's movie came out), he had to pass and the role was played by Cuba Gooding Jr. instead. It worked out for both of them in the end, solidifying Gooding Jr. as a character actor and allowing Smith to establish his wise-cracking, hip, yet also earnest persona.
Rush Hour
A buddy cop action-comedy in the tradition of films like Lethal Weapon, 1998's Rush Hour was a big hit fueled by the screen chemistry between Hong Kong martial arts superstar Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (then still fresh off his comedic breakout performance in Friday) as a pair of squabbling detectives forced to work together. Smith and his Bad Boys costar Martin Lawrence were among the actors offered the role of fast-talking LAPD Detective James Carter before Tucker signed on, but neither of them were interested, having already headlined a hit buddy-cop movie of their own three years earlier. The first two Rush Hour films only worked as well as they did thanks to Chan and Tucker's interactions (something that just barely kept the misbegotten third installment afloat), so it's probably for the best Smith skipped this one.
Snake Eyes
The idea of Smith facing off with Nicolas Cage in a stylishly pulpy mystery-thriller directed by Brian De Palma certainly sounds interesting on paper, and it very nearly happened in real life. Smith was originally lined up to play the antagonistic U.S. Navy Commander Kevin Dunne opposite Cage's ostentatious detective Richard "Rick" Santoro in De Palma's 1998 film Snake Eyes, which itself revolves around a murder conspiracy in the middle of a boxing match in Atlantic City. However, a salary dispute led to his negotiations breaking down and he was replaced by Gary Sinise in the role. It's just as well: Snake Eyes no doubt has it fans, but it drew lukewarm to negative reviews upon its release and only grossed $104 million against a $73 million budget (making it a commercial disappointment).
The Matrix
Smith's decision to pass on playing Neo in The Matrix is easily the most infamous example of him turning down a role that another actor (namely, Keanu Reeves) went on to make iconic. As Smith has explained over the years, he was wary of the project since The Wachowski Sisters had only made a single low-budget movie (the 1996 cult neo-noir thriller Bound) when they approached him. Furthermore, he had a difficult time understanding their vision for the sci-fi film, especially their explanation of how the now-famous bullet-time action sequences would work. And while he went on to star in the critical/commercial bomb that was Wild Wild West the same year The Matrix came out and revolutionized mainstream American sci-fi cinema, Smith now feels the movie wouldn't have worked as well as it did if Reeves hadn't been cast as Neo in his place.
Osmosis Jones
One of the stranger mainstream live-action/animated hybrids released in the early 2000s (or, really, ever), 2001's Osmosis Jones was co-directed by the Farrelly Brothers and is basically a buddy-cop comedy about Osmosis "Ozzy" Jones, a white blood cell police officer who teams up with a cold pill to stop a virus from killing the human - Frank, a schlubby zookeeper played by Bill Murray in the live-action segments - they live in. Per Animated Views, Smith was all set to voice Osmosis until scheduling and script issues forced him to drop out, paving the way for Chris Rock to replace him. Smith would go on to make a very different animated movie a few years later in the form of Shark Tale - a film that didn't fare so well with critics, but gave the actor the family-friendly box office hit he was probably looking for with Osmosis Jones in the first place.
K-PAX
Sci-fi movies and Will Smith usually go together like peas and carrots, but that wasn't the case with K-PAX. An adaptation of Gene Brewer's book of the same name (as well as the first entry in the author's K-PAX novel series), the movie revolves around Robert Porter, a patient at a psychiatric institute who claims he's really Prot, an extraterrestrial who hales from a distant planet known as K-PAX. In a 2007 interview with MTV, Smith confirmed he'd been in the running to play Prot before Kevin Spacey signed on to play the character, saying "I loved, loved, loved [the script for] 'K-PAX,' but it never really jelled in my mind. I always wanted to make that movie." The film didn't have much of an impact upon its release in 2001, but it did come out at a time when Smith was looking to prove his mettle as a dramatic actor, which may explain his interest.
Phone Booth
As part of that same interview with MTV, Smith also talked about his decision to turn down the lead role in the thriller Phone Booth, saying "I loved 'Phone Booth,' [but I passed because] I always felt like the bad guy's story wasn't clear enough." The movie, for those could use a refresher, ended up starring Colin Farrell as a cocky, NYC-based publicist who's held hostage by a mysterious sniper (Kiefer Sutherland) when he receives their call in a phone booth. After being delayed to Spring 2003 in the wake of the D.C. sniper attacks, Phone Booth went on to become a critical and commercial success, and is now regarded as being one of the late Joel Schumacher's all-time best directorial efforts. That's to say: Smith's career is going more than fine without it, but he might've kicked himself afterwards for not signing on when he had the change.
Superman Returns
If you guessed the reason Smith didn't star in 2006's "homage sequel" Superman Returns (despite being offered the chance before Brandon Routh signed on) is because he didn't want racist comic book fans coming for his head, well, you're not wrong. As he (only half-jokingly) told MTV in 2008, "The script came, and I was like, 'There is no way I'm playing Superman!' Because I had already done Jim West [of 'Wild Wild West'], and you can't be messing up white people's heroes in Hollywood!" Appropriately, Smith was doing that same interview as part of the promotional campaign for Hancock, an original superhero tentpole where he played an ill-tempered and frequently drunk super-powered individual who tries to clean up his image with the help of a PR consultant. Despite mixed reviews, Hancock earned far more at the box office than Superman Returns ($624 million vs. $391 million), so Smith got the last laugh in the end.
Django Unchained
There are few A-listers who would pass on the lead role in a Quentin Tarantino film if it was offered to them, but that's exactly what Smith did with Django Unchained. An homage to two of the filmmaker's favorite vintage genres (spaghetti western and Blaxploitation), the movie follows a former slave who teams up with a German bounty hunter to rescue his wife from the plantation where she's still enslaved. As he explained to EW a few months after the film came out in late 2012, Smith turned down the project because "Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character [Dr. Schultz] was the lead!” Many would agree with him on that point, too: Jamie Foxx would go on to star as Django, but it was his costar Christoph Waltz (as Dr. Schultz) who won an Oscar for his efforts (whereas Foxx wasn't even nominated).
Independence Day: Resurgence
Roland Emmerich's Independence Day was the first mega-blockbuster Smith ever starred in, so it only stood to reason he would reprise his role as Captain and hotshot pilot Steven Hiller in Emmerich's sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence. However, he ended up dropping out well ahead of its release in 2016. Emmerich discussed what happened as part of a press event in 2015, saying Smith was "excited" to make the movie at first "but then after a while he was tired of sequels, and he did another science fiction film [After Earth], which was his father-son story, so he opted out." The viral marketing for Resurgence subsequently revealed Hiller had been killed in a military aircraft test gone wrong after the events of the first Independence Day, with Jessie Usher playing his now-grown stepson in the actual film. Once again, though, things played out in Smith's favor: Resurgence earned mostly negative reviews and failed to gross even half of what its predecessor did twenty years earlier.