Latest Will Smith “surprise theater appearance” goes much better than last one

The phrase “Will Smith makes a surprise appearance in a theater” has become a much more complicated one over the last couple of years than it might once have been, on account of that one time Will Smith made, well, a very surprising appearance in a theater. Still, there’s good surprises, and bad surprises, and Smith reportedly made a pretty good one happen for fans of his Bad Boy film franchise this weekend, revealing to an audience at a showing of his new Martin Lawrence collaboration, Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, that he’d been watching the movie with them the whole time.

The film, the fourth in the series, is—among other things—all set to be a bit of a referendum on whether the movie-going public, as a whole, is ready to re-embrace Smith after a couple of years in the Hollywood doghouse; a fairly successful one, too, in so far as the movie is set to pretty handily win the weekend, producing one of the better box office openings of a very sleepy 2024. (Variety has it making something like $53 million this weekend, which isn’t insane, but a whole lot better than Furiosa or The Fall Guy managed.) Reviews have been pretty upbeat, too, noting that, despite all, Smith and Lawrence are still damn good at making this style of Jerry Bruckheimer chaos look really fun.

Anyway, back to the theater-goers: They were apparently filing out of a late showing of the film at a Cinemark in Los Angeles, only for one member of the crowd to remark “I’m glad you all enjoyed that”—because that particular crowd member was Will Smith. (Possibly worried no one was going to notice it was him, hence needing to speak up.) The response, though, is genuinely pretty sweet: A good-natured freak-out from a whole crowd of people, followed by a lot of smiles and hugging from a ton of very happy moviegoers. It’s genuinely nice! A little stage-managed, maybe, but genuinely nice.