17 Awesome Movie Concepts That Were Totally Botched
12. Hancock
The Pitch: Will Smith stars as an alcoholic, wildly irresponsible superhero who attempts to rehabilitate his image.
What Happened?: For starters, this never should've been a PG-13 movie, as the R-rated treatment would've truly allowed it to harness the anti-superhero vibe it was clearly shooting for.
To that end, the original script was far darker than what got shot, with Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan helping to rewrite it into something more palatable and less objectionable for a huge worldwide audience.
Though the first act is pretty damn entertaining, things totally fall apart by the mid-way point when Charlize Theron's Mary is revealed to also be a superhero, and it takes a disappointing turn for the convoluted and overly sentimental.
Simply, Hancock would've been a much more interesting film if the budget was halved and the original script was fully committed to.