It’s been done as a trilogy once and now Sony is looking at doing it again. In an interview in the Hollywood Reporter, producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald revealed that they are working on a reboot of the studio’s popular Men In Black franchise, and it will not feature the films’ most recognizable star.
You produced Men in Black. Has there been talk of reviving that franchise with the new Sony regime?
PARKES We’re in the middle of it. It’s very active.
Is Will Smith going to be part of it?
PARKES Most likely no.
MACDONALD It will be reinvented as a trilogy.
For some, the idea of a Men In Black film without star Will Smith, whose rise to super-stardom was in part due to this movie as much as this movie’s success at the box office was due to Smith’s rising popularity. That’s going to be the biggest sell that a new film will have to make to the public.
You may recall that one of the gold nuggets unearthed in last fall’s Sony Hack was that the studio had been actively working on a film that would crossover the Men In Black series with their newer 21 Jump Street series starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. Jump Street writer/director duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller were working on developing the project for the film. And as the new year started, they stated that they were still trying to crack the story of how Hill and Tatum’s characters would meet up with the secret organization that polices extraterrestrials on Earth. Well, either they couldn’t come up with something they liked or the studio didn’t like what they did come up with, as Sony is now going in an entirely different direction.
