Sunday, May 11, 2008

Not Your Ordinary Reshoot

I, along with about a million of my closest friends, were milling around Times Square last night. I was on my way back from seeing MacBeth. Who knows what the other 999,999 people were doing- wait, I know what some of them were doing: either watching or taking part in reshoots of the vehicle, . From FirstShowing.net:

Apparently Hancock was doing very late reshoots in New York City yesterday, most likely as a result of the ratings troubles they've encountered...

I had seen the trucks and equipments for the reshoots earlier, as I arrived at the theater, but I had assumed that it was for background work, 2nd unit type stuff. It was only when I saw a crowd gathered around a trailer that I thought Smith might be there.

As I left the theater after the show and walked down Broadway, however, I was surprised to see Smith, dressed in his black leather Hancock unitard, jog passed me, waving to the crowd. I didn't get any pictures of the Scientologist star (I wasn't ready) but I did take a few shots of the shoot related stuff earlier in the evening:

Hancock #2
Hancock #3
Hancock #4

I can't say I had much enthusiasm for this film. However, I can't see how doing such late reshoots (the film opens in July) can be spun into a positive. If the film is trying to chase the coveted PG-13 rating this late in the game, how much of their original vision have they already compromised and how much more will they to get there? That the principals may say otherwise means exactly nothing. What are they supposed to say? They have to promote the film. Now is not the moment to get an honest answer. And it doesn't matter. No matter what they say, they're running around doing reshoots a month before the film comes out. Does that sound like a good thing to you? Didn't think so.