Will Smith play Adolf Hitler in an unlikely Netflix TV series? This is not only the brainchild of some clown who, thanks to artificial intelligence, has also managed to make us believe on the net that the famous American actor is engaged in the making of a black Hitler.
This should come as no surprise, after all there are several classic movies involved in the remake. In concrete terms this would be an act of provocation against the many Disney characters who have changed their skin color to promote inclusion and fight racial prejudice. By featuring princesses of color, it seeks to encourage acceptance of differences and promote diversity as a positive thing. Finally, Disney has acknowledged that there is a demand from audiences for more diverse representation in animated films. They strive to satisfy the audience’s desire to see stories that reflect the experiences and cultures of diverse communities. The speech was then concretely implemented in the world of Netflix.
According to a famous tweet, the production was titled “Adolf”. That tweet and a Reddit post featured an image showing the actor dressed as a Nazi leader, with his hair and famous moustache, clenching his fists and speaking into a microphone.
However, claims that Netflix had announced this purported “Adolf” series and that Smith would be playing Hitler were false. We searched Netflix’s website and social media for evidence of such a project being in production and found no confirmation. No such future projects are shown on Smith’s IMDb page.
These images appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In contrast the results of image searches showed no examples of similar images outside of random social media posts and a post on the AI image-generation site, PlaygroundAI, which appears to have been created on May 2, 2023. The image in which Smith made a fist also showed him with six knuckles. As we already mentioned above, extra fingers or lips are often a feature of AI-generated images.
Following Smith’s infamous slap when he hit Chris Rock on stage at the 2022 Oscars after Rock mentioned Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, the actor faced heavy criticism and issued a series of apologies. Following the incident, Netflix shelved one of its films with Smith, “Fast and Loose”, although it is not known whether this was due to the timing or the slap. By March 2023, “Fast and Loose” was back in production with Smith in the lead role.
The images also broke after controversy over the Jada Pinkett Smith-produced Netflix documentary about Cleopatra, in which a darker-skinned, mixed-ethnic actress was chosen to play the titular queen. The casting led to accusations of “blackwashing”, as some scholars claimed that the Queen was fair-skinned and of European descent.
If Will Smith was indeed portraying Hitler in a movie or series, this simple fact would have been huge news and the photos would have been published by far more well-known entertainment magazines. However, given that they were AI-generated fictional images and there was no Netflix announcement of such a series, the claim was deemed “false”.