Director Malcolm D. Lee provides an update on The Best Man Wedding. Way back in 1999, first-time director Lee burst onto the scene with The Best Man, an ensemble comedy starring a host of young actors, many of whom would go on to become A-list stars; Terence Howard, Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, Harold Perrineau, and many others were given a significant boost to their careers thanks to the film, which was a critical and financial success.
In 2013, the cast reunited for the long-awaited sequel, The Best Man Holiday. With fourteen years of accumulated star power, the film was a higher profile release than the original, and became a huge hit, grossing an unexpected $72 million at the box office. A third film, The Best Man Wedding, was immediately given the green light, and writer/director Lee got to work on a script for part three, with the intention that audiences wouldn't have to wait another fourteen years to see what happens next in the story.
Related: The Best Man Holiday Review
For one reason or another, the film started to slip back on the schedule. Initially scheduled for April 2016, the film was initially pushed back to 2017 before being removed from the schedule entirely. During our interview with writer/director Lee to promote the home video release of his latest film, Night School, starring Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish, the conversation inevitably turned to the subject of the long-awaited follow-up to The Best Man Holiday. When asked if scheduling conflicts among the film's busy and famous cast members were holding up production of the third Best Man film, Lee replied:
That's pretty much what's happening. That's what's been the problem. Trying to get everybody. It's a large cast, and they're all working, you know? It's written. It was written so close after the last one, so we'll have to make some adjustments, but it's kind of ready to go.
What's interesting about this particular situation is that the script is locked and loaded and to shoot, but the trick is finding the right window where the whole cast is available. It sounds simple enough, but wrangling talent can be a taxing proposition, especially when talking about big stars who probably aren't bound by multi-film contracts the way typical franchise fare locks down their main actors.
Terrence Howard is a busy bee on Fox's hit show, Empire, while Regina Hall recently earned significant acclaim for her award-winning performance in Support the Girls, which even earned a spot on President Barack Obama's list of favorite films of 2018. Taye Diggs is a bona fide star of stage and screen, and Morris Chestnut is always keeping busy with one film or another (he even co-starred with Regina Hall in 2016's When the Bough Breaks). Basically, a lot of figurative stars need to line up before The Best Man Wedding can proceed.
Lee also says that the script will need to be touched up when the time finally comes to make the film, since it was initially written to take place fairly soon after The Best Man Holiday. That film is already more than five years old, so by the time The Best Man Wedding enters production, Lee will likely have to make some changes to his story to account for the longer-than-expected gap between movies. Still, the movie is bound to arrive sooner or later; hopefully, audiences won't have to wait fourteen years this time around.