Will Smith Claims Hancock 2 In the Works With Zendaya Being Eyed to Star

Will Smith is teasing some forward movement on Hanock 2, the long-awaited sequel to his 2008 superhero film. Smith hopped on a Twitch stream with “@xQc” and during the stream, the Oscar-winning actor and rapper addressed many questions about his career and future projects he has planned for the big screen. One of those projects fans needed an update on was Hancock 2, and Smith dropped the bomb that not only has he seen a “really cool” idea for the sequel, but that there are already being made to lock in Zendaya as its star.

“Hancock 2, yeah! They be leaking all my information! So naw yeah, there’s a really cool – really cool – Hancock 2 idea,” Will Smith told xQc’s stream. “But we haven’t even talked about it, so I’m going to give you one little piece: Zendaya is being – will be – approached for a role in Hancock 2.”

Hancock told the story of “John Hancock,” an immortal superman who has long been afflicted with amnesia (his name being a reference to his inability to sign a true name on official forms), and turned to alcohol to fill the hole in his mind and heart. Throughout the film, a top PR executive named Ray (Jason Bateman) helps sober Hancock up and rehabilitate his image as a hero; the big twist in the film comes when it is revealed that Ray’s mundane wife Mary (Charlize Theron) is actually Hancock’s ex-wife and fellow immortal. The lore of the immortals stated that when two immortal lovers are near one another, they lose their immortal gifts and live out mortal lives; to save Hancock at a critical moment, Mary had to restore his full powers by abandoning him. At the end of the film, Mary and Hancock reconcile but maintain their distance, while Hancock and Ray try to keep their friendship going, despite the awkward situation.

It may be jumping to conclusions just from Will Smith’s claims, but bringing Zendaya into Hancock 2 does immediately suggest that she would be playing Hancock’s daughter, who is presumably dealing with her own emerging powers as an immortal (half-immortal?). That immediately raises intrigue about who the mother of Zendaya’s character would be. Would Charlize Theron return for Hancock 2? Or would the sequel write Mary’s character out (or at least use her and Bateman’s Ray in a different way)?

During the pandemic, Charlize Theron addressed returning for a Hancock sequel and said that even if she were to age out of throwing down onscreen as a superhero immortal she would still come back to the franchise in some capacity:

“You know, for a while we [talked about a sequel],” Theron told ComicBook. “I think closer to when the movie came out, but not in recent years, no. We’ll be superheroes with our walkers, you know. And I’ll still go! I’ll still make that movie, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Obviously, it’s still very early, but hopefully, we’ll hear more about Hancock 2 soon – like whether Zendaya is interested in it. Meanwhile, Theron is still very much active and will be reprising her role as an immortal warrior in a different action movie franchise this year (Netflix’s The Old Guard 2).