It is imperative that people everywhere especially black people boycott Ridley Scott's upcoming film Exodus: Gods and Kings. Ridley Scott has, by his own admission in an interview with Variety on November 25th, purposefully not cast black actors in lead roles because he would not “get it financed.” Ridley Scott has and will continue to benefit financially from excluding black actors from roles that are based on African characters.

 

“I can’t mount a film of this budget, where

I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain,

and say that my lead actor is Mohammad

so-and-so from such-and-such,” Scott says.

“I’m just not going to get it financed.

So the question doesn’t even come up.”

-Ridley Scott

 

 

According to an article on Huffington Post; Black Voices, Ridley Scott was able to reduce his final budget from $200m to $140m due to European tax rebates. Click herehttp://huff.to/1rxd6QK to read the article. He was able to save $60m because he was able to sell a film set in Egypt, an African country, by excluding black actors from lead roles they are fully equipped to play. He didn't even try. In his own words, “the question doesn't even come up.” We're not asking for “Mohammad So and So from Such-and-such.” Did he even consider the black actors who have box office draw; Academy Award winner Chiwetal Ejiafor perhaps, Academy Award winner Denzel Washington or maybe even Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx?

 

Ridley Scott saved $60m by not casting black actors in Exodus. What if black people everywhere came together in a unified stand against this purposeful exclusion that is helping perpetuate a falsehood? Ridley Scott is one of the preeminent filmmaking voices of the last 3 decades. He of all people could sell black people playing African characters to a European market. The fact that he was too lazy to even try could and should cost him as much as he saved in tax rebates.

 

Let's do some maths. According to a Nielsen report, 12% of movie goers the United States in 2012 were African American. On average, a Ridley Scott film has a box return of between one and half and four times what it cost to make the film minimum. According to Box Office Mojo, Gladiator cost $103m to make and made $450m+ worldwide at the box office, Black Hawk Down cost $108m to make and made $170m+ and Hannibal cost $87m and made $350m+ at the box office, I could go on.

 

Therefore, according to my very rudimentary calculations, Exodus is set to make at least somewhere between $350m and $800m worldwide at box office. Let's go with the safe bet and say the film makes double at box office as it cost to make; what if the 12% of African American film goers boycotted Exodus? Twelve percent of $400m is $48m. By boycotting the film black people alone could cost Ridley Scott and the makers of Exodus nearly all that he saved in tax rebates by purposefully excluding black people from his film in the American market alone. I haven't even included the black film goers in the worldwide market in my deductions. How much more could we cost him if world wide black people and those who love and support them united against his awful decision making?

 

We must encourage everyone but especially black people everywhere to boycott this film because black people matter, how black people spend their money matters. Our combined spending power, if channelled strategically could cripple many an industry. However in this case black people could show Hollywood that we will not be ignored or subjugated while continuing to allow these filmmakers with the power to do better to profit from us.

 

I do not think Ridley Scott is a racist. This must be clear. He is a lazy, opportunist who made an extremely poor decision and must be made to pay for it. And we can do it. If black people everywhere refused to watch this film we could teach Ridley Scott and all of Hollywood a lesson they wouldn't soon forget.

 

Thank you very much for your time.

I look forward to hopefully gaining your support.

Danielle

 

Please support the cause by using the hashtag

 

#BoycottExodus