Director Peter Berg has told MTV News that "Hancock 2," while picking up after the events of the first film, will delve deeply into a prequel/origin story that will reveal fresh info about [Spoiler Alert!] the connection between the immortal god/superheroes played by Smith and Theron and how they came to be living in modern day Los Angeles.

"We're looking at exploring their relationship prior to when we first met them and seeing a bit of what happened as a prequel," Berg said. "I think we danced around the concept of an origins and we settled on something that is very substantive. That will part of the sequel."

Following on the $600-plus million dollar success of "Hancock," it took filmmakers a considerable amount of time to find a compelling way into a sequel. But they settled on an outline at the beginning of the summer and then hired writers: Adam Fierro and Glen Mazzara, who have written for shows like "The Shield" and "Dexter."

"It took us a while to start breaking a story that made sense to all of us," said Berg. "We finally did that about three months ago and hired writers immediately. Hopefully we'll have a script soon. It's something everybody's anxious to get involved with."

With writers who have worked on TV shows with tones and plotlines that are far grittier than anything we saw in "Hancock," will the sequel become a darker film than the original? Berg said we should expect the same mix of laughs and emotion.

"One thing we tried to do with the first one was balance comedy with more muscular drama, some would say to mixed results," the director said. "Obviously there were some critics who were not entirely down with that tone. But we believe in it—that we can find both. With Will Smith you get that rare talent who can do broad comedy and is also capable of real emotional drama. We wanted writers who we felt could capture both of those tones."

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