Will Smith’s next comeback attempt could come in a sequel not a single soul is asking to see

The muted response to Apple TV’s Emancipation hinted that perhaps the world isn’t quite ready to embrace Will Smith with open arms once again, or maybe it’s got something to do with tepid reviews painting the picture of a movie that simply wasn’t very good.

Either way, the Academy Award winner’s fall from grace was swift to put it lightly, with one of the biggest and most popular stars of the modern age now scrambling to come up with a solution to his professional woes. It could take a while, and franchise fare is probably the easiest way to go about it, but does anyone really want an Aladdin sequel to be that project?

A follow-up to the billion-dollar Disney remake – which ranks as the top-earning film of Smith’s career – is in some form of development, but director Guy Ritchie has his focus on Hercules for the moment. A new rumor offers that Smith is in line to reprise his polarizing role as the Genie in the second installment, but take this one with a hefty helping of salt.

For one thing, the report comes from British tabloid The Sun, which is questionable enough. In addition, it’s alleged Aladdin 2 will be based on One Thousand And One Nights. While that seems fairly innocuous, the Mouse House already has an adaptation of the folk tale collection in the works, so it’s highly unlikely we’ll be getting two big budget versions of the same story from the same studio in development at the same time.

If there’s an IP that Smith should be looking at to rehabilitate his career and reputation, then you’d think Bad Boys and the DCU would be his safest bets, especially when you’d have to listed pretty hard to hear anyone crying out for an Aladdin follow-up.