Made on a budget of $100 million (a reasonable budget in today’s Hollywood climate), Bad Boys for Life may be an easy win for everyone involved, as it has grossed over $120 million worldwide in just six days, with no clear signs of slowing down before the end of the month. This may soon translate into enough traction to warrant a fifth film.
Following the film’s strong box office opening weekend, legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer recently spoke to Deadline where he said that discussions about a sequel could be underway soon.
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No longer dependent on Michael Bay, 2020’s Bad Boys for Life grossed more than $420 million worldwide on a $90 million budget before the pandemic, after a roughly 17-year hiatus, so Sony and the creative staff quickly moved forward with a sequel. Now, more than four years later, history is repeating itself, with audiences still very interested in Mike Lowry and Marcus Burnett’s low-stakes, highly comedic adventures in the fight against crime and corruption.
Despite his extensive experience working on some of the highest-grossing films in Hollywood history at multiple studios, Bruckheimer modestly says he never knows what will be a hit with audiences: “If you make something the audience wants to see, they’ll go see it. It’s that simple. If it works for them, they’ll line up. I hope we all know what that is. We have hits every time — [and then] We don’t.” He went on to say that he believes audiences are smarter than anyone in Hollywood.
The full conversation is well worth a read if you want to learn about the process behind rebooting a long-dormant action movie saga and other major projects that may or may not happen, but the highlight is his confidence in Bad Boys 5 fame: “We’ve had discussions, but we want to see how the movie performs at the box office, and I’m sure we’ll have discussions this week.” At this point, most box office experts and Hollywood insiders expect Bad Boys 4, which just scored a top-notch 2019 on Rotten Tomatoes, to keep up the momentum at least until A Quiet Place: Day One hits theaters later this month.
The undisputed success of Bad Boys for Life also marks a major win for directorial duo Bilal Fallah and Adil El Arbi, who headed to Warner Bros. to make the abandoned Batgirl movie after the success of Bad Boys for Life and helmed the best episodes of Marvel Studios’ mediocre Ms. Marvel series. Sony may be interested in keeping them directing movies beyond Bad Boys, as they are rumored to be working on a major reboot of the fourth Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland.
