Current state of comedy: Why we'll never see Robert Downey Jr. play a Mexican in Jamie Foxx's shelved comedy

Comedian Jamie Foxx suggested in a recent interview that his shelved comedy All-Star Weekend, where he plays a racist white cop and Robert Downey Jr. plays a Mexican man, would not fly in today's hostile comedy climate.

“It’s been tough with the lay of the land when it comes to comedy,” Foxx told CinemaBlend when asked for an update on the unreleased film.

“We’re trying to break open the sensitive corners where people go back to laughing again,” he said, continuing to be vague about the film’s status.

Filmed in 2016, All-Star Weekend features Foxx and Entourage star Jeremy Piven as two best friends who win tickets to the NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles and encounter a wacky cast of characters on their road trip west.

The boundary-pushing comedy includes Downey Jr. playing a Mexican man, a role Foxx asked him to play after seeing him do blackface in the 2008 Vietnam War satire Tropic Thunder. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor despite the controversy, but lost to Heath Ledger for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Foxx appears in multiple roles, including one as a “white racist cop.” The cast also includes Gerard Butler, Benicio del Toro, Eva Longoria and DJ Khaled.

The Django Unchained star defended provocative comedy to Joe Rogan on his podcast in 2017, saying he never reads social media comments because it stifles his creativity.

But co-star Piven has suggested in the past that the film was delayed due to the comedian’s perfectionism. All-Star Weekend was set to be the Foxx’s directorial debut.

“We did a movie with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. and Benicio del Toro and Gerry Butler and you’ll never see it. Jamie doesn’t want to release it,” Piven said in May.

“I had the time of my life … Foxx is really hard on himself. He’s one of these dudes, you know, he wants it to be perfect, so he’s been holding onto this thing for five years.”

Comedians have recently been pushing back at the negative impact of political correctness on comedy after some were targeted with physical violence for their material.

In July, Monty Python’s John Cleese explained how wokeness allows the "critical mind" to take over the creative, which operate “in opposition to each other."