Will Smith wins over the world

The same way he tackles zombies or aliens, action star Will Smith is taking head-on the long-held assumption in Hollywood that black performers can't sell as many movie tickets internationally as their white counterparts. Audience tracking surveys indicate that I Am Legend – Smith's latest film, due to premiere in London on December 19 - is generating the level of interest normally associated with a summer blockbuster.

Because American revenues rarely cover a Hollywood film's production and marketing costs, the movie industry relies on international sales for profits. According to the Los Angeles Times, two years ago, Smith's romantic comedy Hitch sold an impressive $189m in tickets outside North America. Last year's The Pursuit of Happyness grossed $141.5m internationally. I, Robot and Men in Black II both sold far more tickets overseas than they did stateside. Dawn Taubin, marketing chief at Warner Brothers, says: "You'd be hard-pressed to find anybody with this kind of appeal. He transcends race, gender and age."
 
Smith, 39, now commands upwards of $20m a film and is certainly aware of the history he's making in becoming Hollywood's first post-racial movie star. To promote I Am Legend, the former hip hop artist already has traveled to Japan and Hong Kong and will soon visit Madrid, Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. "He's the youngest, biggest star in the world," Todd Black, who produced Smith's The Pursuit of Happyness, told the Los Angeles Times. "Globally he's more popular than Leo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt."
 
I Am Legend is based on the 1954 sci-fi novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. In the book, the apparent last man on Earth is described as "born of English-German stock" with bright blue eyes. An indication of Smith's box-office power is that he was chosen at all to play the part – apparently over Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise and Michael Douglas, all of whom were suggested at one point for the role. ·