Rumors of a new Bad Boys movie turned to murmurs, and those murmurs turned to full-blown begging from fans after Will Smith dished on a fateful interaction with his co-star Martin Lawrence. Remember?
I saw Martin [Lawrence] a few weeks ago. I haven’t seen him for about two years. We just looked at each other. We hugged. In that moment, we knew we were making another Bad Boys. We’re definitely doing another one.
That was in February. 6 months later, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed that this thing is really happening. According to EW, the hotly, hotly-coveted Bad Boys 3 now has a new title–Bad Boys For Life–and a release date of January 12, 2018. If it seems far away, consider this. We’re less than a year-and-a-half away from the third installment of a series whose last film dropped in 2003 and grossed over a quarter-billion internationally.
BB4L is easily one of the most anticipated third-installments of a movie series in Hollywood history. Lawrence and Smith formed a hysterical combo in 1995 with the original Bad Boys, producing staple pop culture phrases–“bad boys for life”–and somewhat of a modern blueprint for Black comedy thrillers. Now that Smith and Lawrence are far past their physical primes–Smith is 47, Lawrence is 51–it’ll be fascinating to see how they pull off the large-scale stunt scenes Bad Boys films are known for.
Comparatively, Will Smith starred in the third installment of the blockbuster Men in Black series in 2012 after a 10-year lay-off, and the film was a monstrous international success, grossing over $620 million worldwide.