ce Cube is reportedly walking away from a $9 million payday for a co-starring role alongside Jack Black in a new movie “Oh Hell No” after refusing to get vaccinated.
The Hollywood Reporter, citing unnamed sources, said the Sony project was set to film in Hawaii this winter, after the rapper, whose given name is O’Shea Jackson, and Black, who is also a co-producer, signed on in June.
Producers made the request that cast would need to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Director Kitao Sakurai, who was behind the Netflix comedy “Bad Trip,” was directing, THR reported.
According to Independent Movie Database, the movie cast Black as a character who falls in love with the mother of the man Ice Cube had signed on to play.
The film is pushing back its production start and is looking for a replacement for Ice Cube, THR reported. Black injured himself in June while filming a gag for the last episode of Conan O’Brien’s late night show.
Throughout the pandemic, Ice Cube has promoted mask-wearing, THR reported, noting that in August, Bacone College in Oklahoma thanked the star and others for a donation of 2,000 face masks.
In April 2020, the star had unveiled “Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self” T-shirts with proceeds to benefit frontline health workers.
THR reported “Oh Hell No” is the second project that Ice Cube has left in recent months. He also was to have co-starred in boxing movie “Flint Strong,” THR reported, though it’s not clear why he left the project, which started shooting a day before the first lockdown in March 2020.
Vaccine mandates have become an issue on multiple Hollywood projects, according to THR, which reported in July that an agreement between guilds and studios stated producers will have the option “to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A” — where cast and crew work in close proximity — “on a production-by-production basis.”