Why Hancock Starring Will Smith Was Rated PG-13 Instead of R

Long before the breakout small-screen success of The Boys, Will Smith was drinking, slurring, and staggering around the big screen on Hancock (watch it now on SYFY and the SYFY app!) as the kind of lowbrow, deadbeat anti-superhero that would make louts like A-Train and The Deep look like upstanding pillars of society. Even with its wide-appeal box office haul and accessible PG-13 rating, Hancock brought something different to mainstream movie theaters in the summer of 2008 — and, like The Boys, it was some disturbingly dark and funny stuff.

Directed by Peter Berg, Hancock isn’t the kind of movie where only the bad guys do bad things; its chief hero — the fella who’s supposed to be the good guy — does plenty of bad things while he grudgingly goes about saving the day. There’s an infamously shocking scene where Smith’s titular superhero shoves a prisoner’s head right up another inmate’s backside, which, once you’ve locked onto Hancock’s overall vibe, feels more or less like a satisfyingly inevitable gesture. Maybe John Hancock can’t get out of his own way… but he’s gonna make damn sure that no one else steps up to pose extra obstacles.

Why Will Smith’s Hancock traded an original R rating for PG-13

Smith’s drunken, street-sleeping superhero carries the torch for every comic book fan who takes a dark view of what superhuman powers might ultimately do to a person. When bullets can’t harm you and you’re able to fly, when you can heave massive objects and literally can’t die, is there a risk you might fall victim to debauched ennui — that you eventually grow to resent the yawning boredom that immortality brings? 

It’s the good guy’s inverted version of the vampire’s curse. Sure, you can live (seemingly) forever and hold absolute power over every mere mortal… but after 3,000 years, where’s the upside in that? Hancock leans on a couple of neat twists to yank its star out of his endless hero’s bummer and, refreshingly, into an existential tailspin. First, it reveals that Smith’s character can’t remember his deeper past, and then it pairs him with a sketchy love interest (Charlize Theron, as fellow ageless superhero Mary Embrey) who unearths the one mortal flaw that could actually send all his unconquerable powers crashing — for keeps — down to Earth. 

Hancock’s dark and mature themes didn’t weigh it down at the box office: With a PG-13 rating and a July 4th holiday weekend release, it earned $629 million worldwide and finished 2008 as the year’s 4th highest-grossing movie. But in the process, an even darker and edgier superhero thriller — one that certainly never could’ve pulled those kinds of numbers — was banished to the never-made dustbin of adults-only screenplays.

Hancock started life as Tonight He Comes, a 1990s-era screen concept from Vy Vincent Ngo (Beat the Devil, Fool For Love), who ended up co-authoring the final Hancock screenplay alongside Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan. When Ngo originally conceived the story, Smith’s grown-up superhero’s role was instead based on a 12-year-old super kid. But over the course of the next decade, the story sustained a series of studio-sanctioned revisions, while being shopped to different directors (including eventual Hancock co-producer Michael Mann) and enduring script tweaks to avert not one, but two brushes with a box office-stifling R rating. 

The R-rated stuff that was left out of Hancock would likely have only amplified the movie’s bleak tone — possibly at the cost of robbing its lighter comedic moments of their comfortably easy-to-laugh-at mirth. A scene portraying John Hancock drinking around a minor was one big offender, along with a key no-no scene that would have portrayed sexual violence. “We had statutory rape up until three weeks ago,” Berg told The New York Times just ahead of the film’s release, explaining the litany of changes that secured the movie its safer PG-13 rating. 

In the end, Hancock’s PG-13 sweet spot doesn’t sacrifice much in the way of story gravity — mainly because Smith turns in a uniquely no-brakes performance with little interpretive grey area to leave viewers guessing at what sinister demons must be gnawing at his character. Thanks to its more-favorable rating, the movie’s resultant success has also kept the spark alive for a potential sequel: Theron, Smith, and Berg all have hinted, over the years, that they’d each be on board to help explore John Hancock’s next chapter. 

Intriguingly, the sequel chatter hasn’t abated in recent days, with Smith even teasing a possible major casting move during a February 2025 chat with celebrity streamer xQc. “There’s a really cool, really cool Hancock 2 idea,” Smith said (via Variety). “We haven’t even talked about it so I’m gonna give you one little piece — Zendaya is being approached for a role in Hancock 2.”

If you know how the original movie ends, Smith’s Hancock 2 casting tease appears to invite all kinds of fun fan speculation. Watch Hancock and tons of other awesome sci-fi flicks on SYFY and the SYFY app now!