Thetans Just Don't Understand

Industry insiders worry that rumors of Will Smith's ties to Scientology will hurt his box-office draw

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GUILT BY ASSOCIATION? "You don't have to be a Muslim to be a friend of Muhammad Ali," Smith told the New York Daily News, "and you don't have to be a Scientologist to be a friend of Tom Cruise" (Photo: Getty Images)
Will Smith is the world's biggest movie star and king of the July Fourth weekend. Hancock defied the critics to open at just under $104 million, which is a tribute to Smith considering the awful reviews. Still, box-office trackers at rival studios say squeaking past $100 million wasn't quite what Sony Pictures had in mind. "It's a big disappointment. I don't care how you spin it," says one.

The movie has held on pretty well since its opening, but it's running into the Dark Knight this weekend and that should hit it hard. It will get past $200 million, but that's not exactly Iron Man or Indiana Jones money (both cruised past $300 million domestically). Hancock will likely only be Smith's fourth-highest grosser. Still, he remains not only the world's biggest star, but also one of the last giant stars, period. He can do anything: comedy, action, romance, drama. He's huge overseas. And he's still got a reputation for being a good guy to work with.

But some in Hollywood are watching to see whether Smith's foot is edging toward a banana peel. A series of media stories in the Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere has linked Smith to Scientology, and industry veterans are wondering how the relationship will play out.

Smith told Access Hollywood in December that he was introduced to Scientology by his friend Tom Cruise, and that he is "a student of world religion." He also added that "the ideas of the Bible are 98 percent the same ideas of Scientology, 98 percent the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism." In a similar vein, he told Men's Vogue: "The Bible talks about your spirit being immortal, that you were created for existence beyond your physical body. Well, that's no different from Scientology! I don't think that because the word someone uses for spirit is thetan that the definition becomes any different."

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett share a meal with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (Photo: Getty Images)
The drumbeat on Smith's ties to Scientology has gotten louder lately. In January, the New York Daily News reported that Smith gave Hancock crew members cards offering a free Scientology personality test. His publicist denies that. But there also have been a number of reports of links between Scientology and the New Village Academy, a school that Smith and his wife will open in the fall.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the school started about three years ago as a home school for the Smiths' young children and the children of some other families. The school's administrator said the school is secular, but some staff members are Scientologists, and the school uses "study technology" developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. (That approach focuses on students gaining hands-on experience, mastering subject matter before moving to the next level, and not reading past words they don't understand—most of which sounds more logical than techy, but what do we know?) The Times also quotes Scientology critic David S. Touretzky, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, as saying that the school's website is peppered with Scientology terms.

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