As the fallout from ‘the slap’ continues to see Will Smith’s future projects cancelled, you can now add the sequel to David Ayer’s Bright to the pile, because it has been revealed that Netflix have cancelled plans to move forward with a follow-up to the 2017 action-fantasy.
One Netflix’s first big-hitters, Bright was critically mauled upon release, but still notched up close to 11 million views during its first three days on the streaming platform. It was also given its own animated spin-off with Bright: Samurai Soul, while Louis Leterrier had been in talks to direct. However, in a Bloomberg story about Will Smith’s National Geographic series being delayed, their source reveals that after four years of development Bright 2 has officially been cancelled.
The news also comes hot on the heels of the announcement that Netflix subscriptions fell by approximately 200,000 during the first quarter, so spending in excess of $100M (the cost of the original) on a sequel nobody was really crying out for might have been a foolish decision given the streamers current predicament.
Bright takes place in an alternate present-day where humans, orcs, elves and fairies co-exist and follow Smith and Edgerton as two cops – human and orc – who fight to protect the future of their world. The original film featured a stellar cast including Noomi Rapace, Lucy Fry, Edgar Ramirez, Ike Barinholtz, Happy Anderson, Kenneth Choi, Brad William Henke, Andrea Navedo, Dawn Olivieri, Veronica Ngo, Alex Meraz and Jay Hernandez.
Let us know whether you were looking forward to seeing Will Smith and Joel Edgerton reunite in a sequel to Bright, and how disappointed you are about this news by heading to our socials @FlickeringMyth…
Originally published April 22, 2022. Updated April 23, 2022.
