If you're talking about your favorite movie franchises, the chances are pretty good that the best movie is not the third one. Very few trilogies actually get better with each movie, and even the best of them (like Star Wars for example) can fall short on the final chapter. So how will Bad Boys For Life, the long-in-development follow-up to Bad Boys II, fare when it hits theaters in 2018? If you're asking the director Joe Carnahan, it's going to be the best of the entire series.
Joe Carnahan (The Grey, Smokin' Aces, The A-Team) will be taking over writing and directing duties this time around from Michael Bay, and the filmmaker is already pretty confident in Bad Boys For Life. Carnahan is currently hammering out the script, and is eager to reunite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as two foul-mouthed Miami police partners 15 years after Bad Boys II. The writer-director recently spoke with io9 about why he thinks Bad Boys For Life will be the best film yet, and it all comes back to the script.
Unless you're Toy Story 3, usually third ones aren't the strongest, and I think this one will be the strongest of the trilogy thus far. There's a lot of funny shit in this movie. And there's also a very mysterious, but tonally spot-on story that I think is kind of perfect for where we are in this day and age, where the guys are and reflectively, a very modern take on these guys. It's kind of what becomes of Bad Boys when they're not boys anymore.
I would argue that the Bad Boys have never actually been "boys", but after 15 years the script will have to address that the characters aged a bit. It certainly sounds like Joe Carnahan knows what he's doing.
Joe Carnahan goes on to say that the script is "hands down" the "strongest script of any of those movies." Considering that you can sum up a Michael Bay movie with keywords like "explosions" and "robot balls" that might not be saying much, but Carnahan has proven himself to be a very capable action writer. It could be that this Bad Boys is the most personal of the entire series. Of course, that's not to say there won't be plenty balls to the wall action the franchise is known for.
It's been a long time since Martin Lawrence first announced that a new Bad Boys movie was in the works, and the status of development has been a bit off and on since then. The film was supposed to release in June 2017, but was pushed back until January 2018. Right now sights are firmly set on the third movie, but a fourth is also tentatively in the works. If Bad Boys For Life manages to bust down the box office door guns blazing, then we can almost certainly count on more movies in the future.
Bad Boys For Life is currently scheduled to come out in theaters on January 12, 2018. Make sure to stick with Cinema Blend for any and all future updates on the Bad Boys franchise.
