Boris Kodjoe's O.J. Simpson gets the electric chair in shocking teaser for “The Juice”
The filmmakers say Owen Wilson turned down $12 million to star in the movie.
Less than two weeks after O.J. Simpson died from cancer, a provocative new teaser for a long-gestating movie about the controversial football star and acquitted murder suspect condemns him to the electric chair on screen.
The project in question is The Juice, a "satirical thriller" that has been in the works for nearly a decade and was formerly titled Nicole and O.J. The notorious NFL-player-turned-actor is played by Boris Kodjoe, known for his roles in projects like Brown Sugar, Soul Food, The Last Man on Earth, and Station 19.
In the brief teaser (which you can watch below), Kodjoe's Simpson is strapped to an electric chair, and as the charges course through his body, he says, "Think of the real O.J. Simpson, not this lost person." Text on the screen says, "Feel better now? You haven't seen anything yet."
The footage ends with a link to a Google Form requesting suggestions for "outrageous ideas" to include in the movie.
MOVIEFARM/ Youtube
Boris Kodjoe as O.J. Simpson in 'The Juice'Writer-director Joshua Newton has shot about 30 minutes of the film so far, mostly consisting of flashback footage of Simpson and his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, here played by Charlotte Kirk. The footage was filmed in Bulgaria in 2018, in recreations of the couple's Southern California homes.
However, Kirk and Kodjoe will not be portraying the film's lead characters, despite the previous title — instead, the protagonist will be attorney Douglas McCann, who represented Simpson in an unsuccessful bid to procure evidence allegedly withheld by Verizon predecessor GTE that McCann said would exonerate Simpson.
A publicist for the film told Entertainment Weekly that McCann will be played by a "fabulous" actor but declined to identify them. The publicist also backed a Hollywood Reporter article published Wednesday that said Owen Wilson was previously offered a hefty sum to play McCann.
"Owen Wilson turned down the role for $12 million, which we think he'll regret one day, because when you're going to see the whole movie completed, you'll understand this is playing a character of a guy who really existed," the publicist told EW . "This is a true story. A story which is, in many ways, mind-blowing. This s--- really happened."
A representative for Wilson didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
Prior reports about the film have suggested that it will present an argument that definitively exonerates Simpson from Brown's murder. Newton told THR that Wilson ended their meeting by saying, "If you think I'm going to take the lead role in a movie about how O.J. didn't do it, you've got to be kidding me."
The film's publicist told EW that Newton "spent years researching this story, going through every single word of the court transcripts," and that the filmmaker has met with individuals involved in Simpson's murder trial — though the production won't disclose who at this point. (THR previously reported that Simpson defense attorney F. Lee Bailey praised the script as "smashing.")
Additionally, the Daily Mail reported in 2019 that Newton turned down Simpson's offer to serve as a consultant on the project. At the time of the report, the film was aiming to release in time for the trial's 25th anniversary in 2020; now the plan is for a 2025 release, coinciding with the 30th anniversary.
Newton previously made headlines in 2022 when he sued Facebook parent company Meta for $700 million for banning posts about his Holocaust film Beautiful Blue Eyes due to its title violating the company's policies about race.
The Juice was also implicated in a tangled legal saga wherein Newton received millions of dollars for the film's budget as part of a settlement in a legal battle between executives at Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal and Kirk, whom Newton was dating at the time.
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