Bad Boys 4 is in the works with stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence both returning. Released in 1995, the original Bad Boys tapped into the buddy-cop tropes familiar from ‘80s action movies like Lethal Weapon and 48 Hrs. but added a hipper (at least for the mid ‘90s) edge with stars Smith and Lawrence and ratcheted up the action thanks to director Michael Bay.
A big hit with $141 million in box office grosses against a reported $28 million budget, the film was belatedly followed up in 2003 with the sequel Bad Boys II, which also hit big at the box office with a gross of $273 million. A third Bad Boys movie seemed inevitable after the second one performed so well, but as it turned out, it would take nearly two decades for Smith and Lawrence’s wisecracking cop characters to return to the screen. That return is finally here as Bad Boys for Life prepares to hit theaters having received surprisingly positive reviews from critics (the film currently holds a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Bay may be long gone, but the movie still has plenty of action thanks to directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.
With the long-awaited third Bad Boys movie set to be a surprise box office hit, THR reports that Sony is moving quickly to get another sequel into development. Naturally, buddy-cops Smith and Lawrence are both set to return for Bad Boys 4, and so is Bad Boys for Life screenwriter Chris Bremner. Of course, this time around Sony plans to get the sequel out on a faster time frame (it took seventeen years the last time).
Obviously, Smith and Lawrence both know a good thing when they see one, which is why the actors reportedly will be back for even more with Bad Boys 4. Of course, Bad Boys for Life was marketed as a last fling for their characters, but the movie’s big box office obviously forced Sony to reverse course on that idea and go back for more. Bremner clearly delivered the goods with his work on the Bad Boys for Life script, which is also credited to Joe Carnahan and Peter Craig (with an uncredited assist from Seth Rogen), hence his return for the sequel.
That Bad Boys for Life would come out of nowhere to become a critical success and box office hit seems like a very unlikely development indeed, especially considering where star Smith’s career happens to be right now. Smith is in fact coming off a string of flops, including last year’s certified box office bomb Gemini Man, which grossed just $173 million worldwide against a reported budget of $138 million. Smith has definitely struggled in recent years to find vehicles that might help raise his star back up, but if fans don’t want to see him in anything new, at least they still apparently crave the buddy-cop dynamic he creates with Lawrence, even if the stars are both a little long in the tooth at this point. All involved are banking on Bad Boys 4 recapturing the magic one more time.
Source: THR
