Nigerians react to Will Smith’s ‘Nigerian’ accent for his upcoming movie role " Concussion".

Two days ago it was anounced that American actor Will Smith,46, will be playing the role of a Nigerian-American doctor, Bennet Ifekandu in upcoming movie ‘Concussion’.Since then, many Nigerians have reacted to the movie trailer where Will Smith attempts to speak in a Nigerian accent. Many have slammed his accent while others suggest that international actors with Nigerian heritage such as Chiwetel Ejiofor and David Oyelowo should have been cast for the role.The debate was further fueled by BBC Africa’s tweet that asked if Will could do the accent.

BBC Africa ✔ @BBCAfrica

Can Will Smith do a Nigerian accent? The debate is on following the trailer for his new film. http://bbc.in/1O5shNb  pic.twitter.com/d7CNoLZPqf

alivesfree @alivesfree

@BBCAfrica Why not just hire a Nigerian actor??

In The City Africa @InTheCityAfrica

@BBCAfrica watched it, sorry to say No. Where was Chiwetel when this role was cast?

Hideo Kojima @slypanther1

@InTheCityAfrica @BBCAfrica Exactly! Or David Oyelowo

The movie is due out in December, but the trailer was released Monday. It showed Smith as Bennet Omalu, whose work diagnosing a disease in American football players known as C.T.E. — a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head — led to one of the N.F.L.’s biggest crises: a possibility that the game itself could be lethal.

Suicides by former star players, including Dave Duerson and Junior Seau, have heightened the scrutiny on the N.F.L., which has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit brought by about 5,000 retired players, who accused the league of deliberately hiding the dangers of concussions.

The trailer showed several scenes depicting Dr. Omalu with jaw-dropping surprise in his lab and angrily demanding “the truth” from people who appear to be from the N.F.L. Many other scientists have built on Dr. Omalu’s work, which began in 2002, and the N.F.L. has since donated tens of millions of dollars to study the effects of concussions and develop ways of treating them.

The N.F.L. has declined to comment on the trailer or the movie, and several Sony executives, through a spokeswoman, declined to speak about the movie or its production and marketing strategy.

Mr. Landesman, who also wrote the movie, said in an interview that the email conversations do not show Sony bowing to the N.F.L., but rather trying to portray the characters and story as accurately as possible to reduce the chance that the league could attack the filmmakers for taking too much creative license.

He added that like many large companies, movie studios that take on controversial topics try to anticipate how their films might be criticized and prepare defenses. He confirmed that Sony lawyers deleted some material from the film, but he declined to elaborate on the cuts beyond saying that they did so to make the story “better and richer and fairer.”

Omalu in 2007. He is the forensic pathologist who identified chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits. Credit Lisa Renee Kyle for The New York Times

Those changes, he said, did not alter the thrust of the story, which focuses on Dr. Omalu, a forensic pathologist who identified C.T.E., or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.