Hancock: The Will Smith Superhero Film

MTV has a pretty in depth article on the upcoming Will Smith superhero movie Hancock. For those who don't know, Hancock centres on a deadbeat superhero, who's fallen out of favour with the public, as he begins an affair with a married woman. The project has been knocking around for ages, shifting hands through directors as diverse as Jake Scott, Michael Mann, Jonathan Mostow and finally Peter Berg. Will Smith plays the titular hero and Charlize Theron the housewife he has eyes for.

"There's a real intelligence to it," says Theron. " was fun yet smart, complicated had a lot of conflict. I don't see a lot of that coming from Fourth of July movies. I like that."

Jason Bateman, who starred briefly with Theron in brilliant but cancelled sitcom Arrested Development, has high hopes for the movie.

"It's got a lot of interesting, different tones €” it's action, it's drama, it's comedy," Bateman says. "And with Pete Berg directing it, they definitely wanted to embrace those multiple tones, as opposed to having somebody come in to just deliver this popcorn, commercial film. I hope, I think, it feels like we're executing and delivering them well €” it won't just be a typical summer popcorn movie, but it will hold up to high-brow scrutiny."

Director Berg feels his movie isn't quite a deconstruction, or a parody of the genre.

"I don't think it's either. It's a pretty straightforward superhero film," he said. "We're introducing a new superhero; it's just that he's got some problems. But at its core, this is an attempt to create a brand-new superhero."

I had a chance to read the script back when it was called Tonight, He Comes - and thought it was really great. That version of the script was a deconstruction of superheroes in their cinematic form (whereas Watchmen took apart the comic book medium). However, since Smith came on board, and with Berg's "straightforward" comment, it looks more and more like this has been chiseled into a "Will Smith vehicle". Originally, the Hancock character turns into the villain in the third act and the Bateman character (previously a low-paid , mild mannered security guard, now a hotshot PR exec) came through to save his family. It was a fairly closed story, but with Berg and Smith onboard, Sony are obviously thinking franchise. source - mtv