Why did Will Smith reject Christopher Nolan's 'Inception'? Previously, the 'Independence Day' actor had rejected two other blockbusters
He first rejected The Matrix, then Django Unchained, and later, Inception. Will Smith and Aamir Khan (who recently revealed he rejected Swades) seem to have something in common. The former shared during an interview on radio station Kiss Xtra that one of the films he rejected that hurt him was Christopher Nolan's pitch of Inception because he wasn't convinced by it. The project then went to Brad Pitt and finally landed in the lap of Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom the film went on to achieve blockbuster status worldwide.
“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,” said Smith in the interview, adding that he couldn't absorb the plot completely. But this was not the same reason for rejecting The Matrix, which he explained in a 2019 video. In the video, he had said, “We’re thinking like… imagine you’re in a fight. You, like, jump. Imagine if you could stop jumping in the middle of the jump. But then, people could see around you 360 degrees while you stop jumping. We’re going to invent these cameras and then people can see the whole jump when you stop in the middle of the jump.”
Again, another case of a movie turning into a massive hit after another actor — in this case, Keanu Reeves — came on board.
As for rejecting Django Unchained, Smith had explained in a couple of interviews why he did so, with the most prominent reason being that Smith wanted to go with a love story, not a revenge story.
In an old interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Smith elaborated: “To me, it’s as perfect a story as you could ever want: a guy that learns how to kill to retrieve his wife that has been taken as a slave. That idea is perfect. And it was just that Quentin and I couldn’t see [eye to eye]. I wanted to make that movie so badly, but I felt the only way was, it had to be a love story, not a vengeance story.”
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