12 Terrible Movies That Blew Awesome Concepts

9. Hancock

The Pitch

What if a guy with superpowers (Will Smith) was a suicidally depressed alcoholic who caused millions of dollars in property damage and was more a super-scourge than a superhero?

In 2008 the hype was certainly real for this ahead-of-its-time black comedy superhero film, boasting a stonking $150 million budget and killer cast (also including Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron).

What Went Wrong

As is so often the case with big-budget movies, a brilliant original idea had most of its edges planed away during production.

Hancock is based off a script called Tonight, He Comes, which spent the better part of a decade being passed around Hollywood before it was finally re-written into what would become Hancock.

And during that process, the R-rated tone was re-worked in favour of a broader, more "family-friendly" one, with the narrative focus shifted to a more convoluted and sentimental plot involving Charlize Theron's Mary.

Though it's generally accepted that Hancock begins solidly, things take a sharp turn at the mid-way point, with an increasingly contrived and offputting number of revelations which over-complicate a fairly straight-forward character study.

In a post-Deadpool world, it's easier to imagine studios accepting the original script at face value, but back in 2008, the world clearly wasn't quite ready for a more rough-edged vision of superheroism.

Still, Hancock ended up grossing over $620 million worldwide despite mixed-negative reviews, so Columbia probably feels justified in sanitising the project so aggressively.