‘Difficult’ Will Smith Tried to Back Out of ‘Hitch’ Three Days Before Filming
Hitch didn’t go off without a hitch. In fact, the film’s director recently told Business Insider that Will Smith’s 2005 romantic comedy almost didn’t get made at all thanks to all the “crazy shit” that went down during preproduction.
The problem, explained director Andy Tennant, was that he and Smith had completely different visions for the comedy. “Neither one of those movies is as good as the movie we made together. It was a battle. Jada (Pinkett Smith) was a big help. She kind of seconded some of my instincts. There was a time during prep when I was pushing back.”
Smith pushed back, too. He kept coming to the table with “crazy story ideas,” including a draft so misguided that Tennant said he was more afraid that Smith would make that version than he was about getting canned. The idea that the studio would fire Tennant, fresh off his hit Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon, was very real.
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Smith finally agreed that his script was off, but he still tried to back out three days before filming began so he could noodle on his screenplay some more. “It was madness,” Tennant remembered.
Smith and his director agreed on one thing — Hitch was going to be terrible. “When we wrapped, Will walked off the set, didn’t say goodbye to me, didn’t say anything, he just left,” Tennant said. “I think he felt the same way I did. He thought, ‘This movie is a disaster.’ We wrapped, and it was depressing.”
“I swear to god, when we wrapped that movie, I called my wife and said, ‘I’ve just ruined my career, and I’ve ruined Will Smith’s career,’” Tennant said.
The first sign that things were turning around? The director got a call from editors who were assembling the film. Hey, all strung together, Hitch didn’t look so bad after all. In fact, the comedy might even be… good? Hilarious even? “I think I started crying,” said Tennant.
The film’s screening was a smash, testing higher than any other movie the studio had in the pipeline. No notes, said the executives. Hitch became a critical and commercial hit — the 10th-biggest movie of 2005 and a Valentine's Day cable TV staple for the first part of this century.
The rom-com continues to have life, too. In 2014, Smith commissioned a TV version of Hitch for Fox that has yet to see the light of day. Tennant pitched a “quite fun” idea for a movie sequel but that went nowhere when he discovered that somebody else had beaten him to the punch.
“I guess Will is developing a Hitch sequel without me,” Tennant said. “Hey, that’s Hollywood.”
