Darted lion dies during the making of a film involving Oscar winner Will Smith

Darted lion dies during the making of a film involving Will Smith. This is almost certainly NOT the lion in question if the story is true. Image: Twitter.

We have next to nothing on this story but I want to get in early. It is therefore an allegation at this stage. It comes from a tweet which in turn comes from an online newspaper (Sunday Standard). Neither have substantiated the story. We have no evidence that it happened. That's not to say that it did not happen. 

The tweet implies that a lion was tranquillised with a dart in order to successfully capture the desired footage and died perhaps because they used too much tranquilliser.  Tranquillising a big cat is tricky as you have to sedate them but not kill them. A difficult balance. Mistakes have been made before.

Will Smith won an Oscar for King Richard. He is famous for striking Chris Rock the presenter at a subsequent Oscar ceremony.

If the story is correct, this is my assessment without more information. Here is the tweet. Note tweets are sometimes pulled from Twitter for whatever reason and if that happens this embedded version will stop working.

#Lion dies after being darted during a documentary filming by #American Oscar winning Hollywood actor Will Smith in #Botswana. Once again #wildlife suffers for human greed & entertainment😡https://t.co/axVraYJuLo pic.twitter.com/HVXZHY97Hz

— Sue Spurgin (@SueSpurgin) July 8, 2023