Well, ask and ye shall receive! I just uploaded photos of Will at the “Hancock” premiere in Japan. Enjoy!

GALLERY LINKS:
• Appearances from 2008 - “Hancock” - Japan Premiere [HQ]

“Hancock” led the foreign box office for a second weekend, earning a huge $70.4 million from 67 markets, according to final data issued Monday.

Will Smith’s superhero comedy opened at No. 1 in 12 markets, including Russia ($11.4 million), France ($9.9 million), and Mexico ($4.6 million). After two weekends, the U.K. has contributed $33.4 million, Germany $24.2 million and Korea $14.7 million. Its foreign total rose to $180.6 million.

Meanwhile, “Kung Fu Panda” reached an international total of $218.4 million as it pulled in $42.2 million from 44 territories. New markets for “Panda” included France ($7.4 million), and Spain ($6.3 million). (more…)

Will Smith’s July 4 victor “Hancock” fell more than 50 percent in its second week at the box office, losing its No. 1 spot to “Hell Boy II: The Golden Army.”

The demon spawn superhero took in $35.9 million compared to the demi-god superhero (“Hancock”), which had a $33 million weekend, CinemaBlend.com reports.

Another major opener “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” starring an aging Brendan Fraser, debuted in third with $20.6 million. (more…)

Will Smith’s box-office superpowers remain intact. Smith’s “Hancock” — the story of a boozing, foul-mouthed superhero who dresses like a street bum — led the Fourth of July weekend with a $66 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.

That raised the total for Sony’s “Hancock” to $107.3 million since it opened Tuesday night to get a jump on the holiday.

It was a familiar place for Smith, one of Hollywood’s most-consistent draws. “Hancock” is his fifth movie to open at No. 1 over the Fourth of July. The others were “Men in Black” and its sequel, “Independence Day” and “Wild Wild West.” (more…)

Will Smith’s “Hancock” is no super hero at the box office.

If numbers hold up, “Hancock” will finish a five-and-a-half-day July 4th weekend with just under $100 million. That’s about equal to what his last movie, “I Am Legend,” did last December. The only difference is that “Legend” did that without the advantage of a long holiday weekend.

The other difference is that on “Legend”’s opening night it took in around $30 million. “Hancock” has done very well, but nothing like that. On Friday night it did an estimated $18 million — and that may be an over-estimate. (more…)

In the grand scheme of things, there are heroes and superheroes. And then there are super-superheroes.

“The last ‘Superman’ I got offered,” Will Smith revealed recently, reminiscing about the time he passed up the “Superman Returns” role that eventually went to Brandon Routh, “the script came, and I was like, ‘There is no way I’m playing Superman!’ Because I had already done Jim West [of 'Wild Wild West'], and you can’t be messing up white people’s heroes in Hollywood!”

Laughing, the king of the 4th of July weekend added, “You mess up white people’s heroes in Hollywood, you’ll never work in this town again!”

Over the past decade, Will Smith has easily been one of the most bankable movie stars in the world. With big-budget action release “Hancock” hitting theaters just in time for the July 4th holiday, Smith will likely add another title to his already impressive list of lucrative movies.

Also entering into the box office equation this weekend is G-rated “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.” While its rating will ensure somewhat of an overlap in audiences with “Wall-E,” the limited release of “Kit Kittredge” indicates that it won’t have too much of an effect on the computer animated blockbuster but could still reach the top five. (more…)

Hancock is the superhero nobody likes. Oh, he can fly; his chest does repel point-blank bullets. And he saves people, averts catastrophe, stops bad guys from doing bad things. But Hancock has a personality defect: he’s a horrible human being/deity. He guzzles way too much Royal Crown, which puts him in a perpetually bad mood and interferes with his self-aviation skills — the man is a drunk flyer. (And then he lands so hard on a street, he digs a ditch in the asphalt.) He wrecks everything he touches. When he’s finished a mission, all of L.A. has become collateral damage. Once Hancock was summoned to the aid of a whale that had washed up on the beach. When he lifted the creature by its tail and tossed it back in the sea, it landed on a distant ship. “I don’t remember that,” he says to somebody, who replies, “Greenpeace does.” (more…)

GALLERY LINKS:
• Appearances from 2008 - “Hancock” - Los Angeles Premiere

There’s some idea out there in the world that Will Smith “owns” the July 4 holiday weekend in terms of box office. I guess this is because of “Independence Day,” one of my favorite movies, and “Men In Black,” also quite good, released, respectively, in 1996 and 1997 on that weekend.

Alas, all good hype must come to an end. “Hancock,” with which Sony is hoping to have a merry July 4, 2008, may not duplicate Smith’s previous successes. It is one of the worst family holiday weekend releases of recent memory — and jaw-droppingly so. And that’s hard to do since it clocks in at a mere wisp of one hour and 20 minutes. (more…)

Will Smith’s powers are even more extraordinary than those of a caped crusader who can leap way beyond the tallest buildings in a single bound.

Smith has salvaged many vehicles more threadbare than “Hancock,” and though his latest venture is decidedly uneven, he seems poised to score yet another supervictory at the box office when it opens July 2. The Columbia Pictures release is a good showcase for him — and for co-stars Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman. Imagine the heights they all could have scaled if the picture had been really good. (more…)

More stills from ‘Hancock’ have surfaced and I just uploaded them to the gallery. Nothing that we haven’t already seen in the trailers and clips but still nice!

GALLERY LINKS:
• ‘Hancock’ - Stills [HQ]

Since 1776, the Fourth of July has meant three things: barbecues, three-day weekends, and inexplicably enormous box-office receipts for Will Smith sci-fi vehicles of varying quality. Over the years, Smith’s Independence Day–related bankability has proven so infallible that Columbia Pictures probably didn’t think twice about giving the go-ahead for Hancock — his new presumed blockbuster (budgeted at $150 million) about a drunk superhero who gets saved by a kindly publicist — as long as director Peter Berg could have it ready for release next weekend. Could this inane decision really have been as stupid as it sounds? Maybe! The first reviews for Hancock are in, and they’re not very good! (more…)

Box office champ Will Smith has become as synonymous with the Fourth of July as fireworks and backyard barbecues — but the star says he takes nothing for granted as he opens yet another summer holiday blockbuster with his new action film, “Hancock.”

“I feel like I have a relationship with the audience,” Smith told Matt Lauer on the TODAY set, winding his way through a cheering throng of fans. “They agree they are going to go in droves, and I agree that every time they go, it’s going to be better than the last time.”

He may play a disgruntled superhero in ‘Hancock,’ but Will Smith is always entertaining in person. He sat down with our Kevin Frazier to talk about facing off against daughter Willow at the box office, and those crazy rumors about him and co-star Charlize Theron!