Fans of the Bad Boys movie series can once again start looking forward to another instalment. Following the news last year that Sony had removed the third movie in the hit action franchise from its schedule, the film has now been given a new release date.
As reported by Variety, Bad Boys For Life will now hit theaters on January 17, 2020. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence will return as the rule-breaking cops, and the movie will be directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The filmmaking duo are also attached to a reboot of Beverly Hills Cop, but there has been no further news about that since last year.
Bad Boys For Life has experienced a series of delays and date changes over the past few years. Both Bad Boys For Life and Bad Boys 4 were announced in August 2015. At the time, the former was given a February 2017 release, which subsequently moved back to early 2018, and then to November this year. By August last year, neither movie appeared on Sony’s schedule.
Following the departure of original director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team), Lawrence himself cast doubt on whether Bad Boys For Life would ever happen. “I don’t think we’re going to get one,” he said. “Not the way everything’s turning out. Will is off doing another movie, and I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
It was Smith himself who first revealed that a third movie was in the works. In 2016 he spoke about meeting co-star Martin Lawrence for the first time in several years. “We just looked at each other,” he said. “We hugged. In that moment, we knew we were making another Bad Boys. We’re definitely doing another one.”
The first Bad Boys was released in 1995, with the sequel following in 2003. Both movies were directed by Transformers‘ Michael Bay, and are somehow actually quite enjoyable despite that fact.
In related news, it was recently reported that the sequel to Smith’s Netflix hit Bright has a new writer. Beauty and the Beast‘s Evan Spiliotopoulos will pen the follow-up to the sci-fi thriller, which was released on the streaming service last December.