Will Smith pays homage to the late Robin Williams and his original Genie
Will Smith shared a touching post in honor of the late Robin Williams.
Smith will take on the famous Genie role in Disney's upcoming live-action adaptation of "Aladdin." Williams played the character in the original 1992 animated classic.
"I know Genies don’t have Feet... But you left some Big Shoes to fill," Smith captioned his post. "R.I.P., Robin!"
"And Thank You, @helloluigi Love the art work!" Smith added in the post, mentioning the artist of the piece, Luigi Lucarelli.
Williams died in August 2014.
Smith spoke about reprising the famous role during an interview with EW in December 2018.
"I produced 'The Karate Kid' with my son Jaden, so whenever you’re doing things that are iconic, it’s always terrifying," he said. "The question is always, where was there meat left on the bone, and with the Robin Williams character, Robin didn’t leave a lot of meat on the bone."
"The first aspect was it was live action, so that meant it would look and feel really different, so I was encouraged by that," he added.
He also talked about how he wanted to make his performance unique.
"After I watched the movie a few times, I saw where Robin Williams infused the character with a timeless version of himself, so I said to myself, 'What if I just infuse the character with a timeless version of myself?' And then that opened up for me … hip-hop, it opened up fashion," he told the outlet.
"Because the Genie is timeless, you get to really say and do anything so I started to feel confident that I could deliver something that was an homage to Robin Williams but was musically different and just the flavor of the character would be different enough and unique enough that it would be in a different lane versus trying to compete," he added.
Check out the film's trailer, which debuted on Tuesday.
Disney's live-action adaption of "Aladdin" opens in U.S. theaters nationwide on May 24.
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