The specter of Bad Boys 3 has loomed in Hollywood for some time now, with the movie always seeming to be in some stage of development only to never fully materialize. We have even suspected that this movie will never really happen. After all, it's been years since it was announced, and some films never escape development hell. Regardless, now it appears that once again there movement on the project and we may yet see Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett riding together on theater screens. The latest hopes for the third film in the franchise, the perfectly titled Bad Boys For Life, comes in the form of new directors Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah, who are in negotiations with Sony Pictures to direct the film.
Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah are a Moroccan born duo, raised in Belgium. The two first broke out with their 2015 Belgian film, Black. The filmmaking team also directed two episodes (including the pilot) of the recent FX series, Snowfall. They are also attached to another film, long in development, Beverly Hills Cop 4. Perhaps after those two they can tackle the Crow reboot and the Masters of the Universe film. While the deal is not yet finalized, Sony Pictures is looking for an August production start date on Bad Boys For Life with the two directors according to Deadline. The film would reunite Martin Lawrence and Will Smith with franchise producer, Jerry Bruckheimer. The current draft of the script for Bad Boys For Life has been written by Chris Bremner.
While Bad Boys For Life is still a long way from theater screens, this is the most positive news we have had on the film in a while. The movie has been repeatedly delayed and has had trouble locking down a director. The first two action-comedies were directed by Michael Bay, but he hasn't shown much interest in returning to that world. At one point The Grey director Joe Carnahan was attached to direct and things seemed to be looking good; however, he left the project. Everything seemed to be back to square one and although Jerry Bruckheimer remained hopeful, star Martin Lawrence has doubted that the film would ever happen. This project also faces the difficulty of bringing all the disparate elements together, including Will Smith -- who is always in demand and has quite a busy schedule.
The Bad Boys franchise is one of the staples of the buddy cop genre and the original was one of the first films to put Will Smith on the map as a bonafide movie star. While the 1995 and 2003 films are far from critical darlings, they are the kind of fun action-comedies and buddy cop films that are more rare nowadays. Will Smith has proven to have serious dramatic chops but some of the most fun watching him on screen has been when he has had a contrasting dance partner in these types of films, be it Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys, Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black or Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. His most recent film, Netflix's Bright, also used this dynamic and proved to be a big hit for the streaming service.
There is no new release date for Bad Boys For Life, but things are finally moving in the right direction. While the film won't be hitting theater screens this year as was once intended, there are plenty of other movies that will, check them out in our release schedule.
