Sony Pictures sets a new release date for their upcoming Men in Black spinoff, delaying the movie from May 2019 to June 2019. A fourth movie set in the Men in Black universe has been in the works for several years now. At first, the studio planned on bringing back Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as Agent J and Agent K, respectively, following the release of Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black 3 in 2012. Unfortunately, things didn't work out.

Then, in 2013, 22 Jump Street scribe Oren Uziel started penning a script for Men in Black 4 with younger actors in mind, particularly Smith's son, Jaden Smith. It's been five years and there still hasn't been any update on that project, but in 2014, thanks to leaked emails obtained from the infamous Sony Pictures hack, it was revealed that the studio also broached the idea of a Men in Black-Jump Street crossover, entitled MIB 23 (a sequel to 22 Jump Street which was later confirmed by directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller). But, even that crossover never made it past the planning stages. Instead, Sony started fast-tracking a spinoff movie in early 2017, which is currently slated to release in summer 2019 - but one month later than previously expected.

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Deadline reports that Sony's untitled Men in Black spinoff has been from May 17, 2019, to June 14, 2019. The movie was previously slated to open opposite Keanu Reeves' John Wick: Chapter 3, and it's now going to open one week after 20th Century Fox's Gambit, starring Channing Tatum, and against Warner Bros.' Shaft reboot/sequel, starring Richard Roundtree and Samuel L Jackson.

Sony-owned Columbia Pictures is producing the film based on a script from screenwriting duo Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, who are both known for co-writing the screenplays for Jon Favreau's Iron Man and Michael Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight. While the original movie was loosely based on the Aircel/Marvel comic book series of the same name by Lowell Cunningham, it seems the new story will be an original idea that takes cues from the previous films rather than the written source material.

A Men in Black movie at this point in time may sound absurd to general audiences, but so did a Jumanji sequel - and look at how Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle turned out. Sony is now slowly moving away from '80s remakes and towards '90s sequels. After all, the '90s is a period of time that hasn't been fully exploited yet with regard to nostalgia.

More: 15 Things You Didn't Know About Men in Black

Source: Deadline