When Will Smith and Martin Lawrence signed up for Bad Boys for Life, they meant it. And despite Smith’s current status as movie star non grata, Lawrence says that detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey will ride again.
In a new interview with Ebony, Lawrence brushed off the notion that their action-packed buddy-cop franchise might come to an end after Smith infamously slapped Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars.
“We got one more at least,” Lawrence said.
The original Bad Boys, directed by Michael Bay, premiered in 1995, when both Smith and Lawrence were better known as sitcom stars — Smith for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Lawrence for Martin, which just had its 30-year reunion special.
The film grossed $141 million worldwide, helped make Smith a bona fide action star, and kicked off a successful franchise, with 2003’s Bad Boys II and 2020’s Bad Boys for Life bringing the series to a total of $840 million at the global box office.
“It was big,” Lawrence told Ebony of the first Bad Boys. “For us to come together and prove that we can deliver, and we can pull people into the box office — that two Black stars, two sitcom stars, could make money at the box office [was huge].”
It was not only huge for the culture, but for Lawrence, both personally and professionally. “I didn’t go to college, so I felt TV was my college years,” he said. “I felt with movies, I had graduated; it was just different.”
With that history, it’s no surprise that Lawrence, who has weathered his own share of controversies, would want to make another Bad Boys movie.
But in the wake of Smith’s much-ballyhooed slap — which came in response to a joke Rock made on stage about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith — it’s been reported that a number of the Oscar winner’s movie projects have been put on hold, including Bad Boys 4.
EW has reached out to Sony Pictures for comment on Lawrence’s remarks and the status of a fourth Bad Boys film.
If Lawrence gets his way though, he won’t be turning in his badge and gun any time soon. As he told EW back in 2020, “I think we have something special, and I want that to keep going.”
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