expand to leading-man grandeur. But Robinson never doubled as an industry mogul. Whitaker, on the other hand, has directed three films, including the hit Waiting to Exhale (1995) and the Texas-set Hope Floats (1998); worked hard to bring young black talents like Coogler to the fore; and championed documentary filmmaking (he was one of the producers of the Sundance Channel reality series Brick City, about Newark mayor Cory Booker). If he doesn’t seem to fit into any familiar Hollywood boxes, that’s because he just keeps inventing boxes of his own—and expanding them to fit his outsized talents. 

As of press time, The Butler hasn’t been completed, so there’s no telling if this will be the Next Great Forest Whitaker Performance some of us have been waiting for. There’s reason to be hopeful: Daniels’s genre-busting sensibilities should be a perfect match for an actor whose career has been a gloriously unwieldy mash-up. On the other hand, there’s reason to be skeptical: mid-August is traditionally a studio dumping ground. Yet even if The Butler turns out to be a letdown, you get the sense that it’s only a matter of time before Whitaker’s star once again shines brightly. (He’s reportedly set to play Martin Luther King Jr. in an upcoming biopic.) If I had a genie’s wish or two, I’d ask to see him unleash his smoldering romantic side, which we haven’t seen since Bird, or team up again with Jim Jarmusch, who in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000) showed that Whitaker has a knack for droll comedy. Then again, maybe a better wish is for Whitaker to just keep working hard year in and year out, always doing the last thing we’d expect of him.