Jamie Foxx is an Oscar-winning actor who has been performing in high-profile projects for years. Foxx is also an accomplished musician and stand-up comic. Several years ago, he added director to his resume, but his feature directorial debut was one of those movies that was completed but never released.
The movie in question is a comedy called “All-Star Weekend,” which originally began filming way back in 2016. As reported by Deadline at the time, the stacked cast included the likes of Jeremy Piven (“Entourage”), Eva Longoria (“Desperate Housewives”), Jessica Szohr (“Gossip Girl”), and rapper Snoop Dogg, among others. As for what it’s about? The article included a synopsis at the time, which reads as follows:
The comedy centers on two tow-truck drivers, Malik (Foxx), and Danny (Piven), who are basketball fanatics and would take a bullet for their respective favorite players, LeBron James and Steph Curry. Danny’s girlfriend Abby (Szohr) is reconsidering the relationship as she does not want to take a back seat to his obsession. The two drivers finally get a break from their dead-end job when they win tickets to the NBA All-Star Game.
“The jokes are all the way out there. I got everybody in it. We all play different characters. Like, I play a white, racist cop,” Foxx said in a 2017 interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, adding that “We shot [it] for little-to-nothing,” suggesting it was a very low-budget affair. Foxx also explained how he coaxed Robert Downey Jr. into another controversial role after “Tropic Thunder.”
“I called Robert, I said, ‘I need you to play a Mexican.’ I said, ‘S***, you played the Black dude [in ‘Tropic Thunder’] and you killed that s***.’ We got to be able to do characters.”
All-Star weekend has several controversial elements to contend with
“All-Star Weekend” hasn’t seen the light of day because it contains several controversial elements. Jamie Foxx playing a white cop and Robert Downey Jr. playing a Mexican man is a minefield of political incorrectness to navigate. Yes, RDJ played a white man who was playing a Black man in a movie in “Tropic Thunder,” which Ben Stiller makes no apologies for, but that would admittedly be a tough sell today. This, despite the fact that Downey was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work.
Foxx and RDJ did have a prior working relationship, having starred in “Due Date,” which Downey once called the “second greatest movie” he’s ever made. Downey does like going out on limbs for his roles. But he’s now an Oscar-winning actor with a lot to protect. The same goes for many people in this movie, including Gerard Butler, Benicio Del Toro, and DJ Khaled. It’s probably not worth it for them to go out on a limb to help get the movie released.
There’s also the matter of Jeremy Piven, who is one of the lead cast members. Piven was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in 2017 and 2018, per BuzzFeed. That’s also something that is difficult to reconcile for anyone who would theoretically be interested in distributing “All-Star Weekend.”
“It’s been tough, with the lay of the land when it comes to comedy, man,” Foxx said in an interview with CinemaBlend about the movie’s postponed release in 2022. “We’re trying to break open those sensitive corners where people go back to laughing again. And that’s why I think, even in this film, which is great, is [that] the one thing we kept hearing in the screenings was how much people were laughing.”
Will All-Star weekend ever see the light of day?
“All-Star Weekend” is a tough sell and has been pretty much since it was completed. That’s not to say that Jamie Foxx hasn’t tried to make something happen. In 2024, Foxx leaked a trailer for the movie (via JoBlo), seemingly trying to emulate the infamous leaked “Deadpool” test footage that forced Fox to make that movie. The leak didn’t seem to move the needle very much.
The movie didn’t have a distributor ahead of production. Securing distribution has clearly been difficult. Whether or not the movie will ever see the light of day remains to be seen, but in a 2025 interview (via Complex) while promoting his Netflix movie “Back in Action,” which was Cameron Diaz’s first movie in 11 years, Foxx revealed that he knocked out boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the movie, while casting doubt that it will ever be released. As explained:
“I got a chance to knock out Floyd Mayweather. In my movie that’ll probably never come out. It was called ‘All-Star Weekend’. I’m doing this thing and then I have to literally clock him and it’s the only time you ever see Floyd Mayweather get hit.”
It would take a streaming service or small theatrical distributor who believes that the juice is worth the squeeze to make this happen. Getting actors to promote it might be difficult, and the inevitable backlash has to be factored in. The ends will make it hard to justify the means. That’s not to say it’s impossible — stranger things have happened — but a decade removed from the movie’s initial production, it seems less and less likely that it will ever actually come out.
“All-Star Weekend” remains without a release date, but stay tuned.
