This Legendary Action Director Almost Brought Bad Boys For Life To The

Contents

Joe Carnahan Has a History of Creative Differences With A-List Stars Joe Carnahan’s Script Ideas Were Retained in ‘Bad Boys for Life’Michael Bay Might Have Introduced the World to ‘Bad Boys,’ but There’s a Good Reason He Didn’t Continue With the Franchise Bad Boys for Life

When Michael Bay stepped away from the Bad Boys series in the years after the release of 2003’s Bad Boys II, it was going to be difficult shoes for any filmmaker to replicate the Bayhem style of action entertainment. Fortunately, the Belgian directing team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah managed to mesh Bay’s style with their colorful approach to personal storytelling in the long-awaited third installment, Bad Boys for Life. But the duo may not have gotten their breakthrough Hollywood success had Joe Carnahan stood in place as Bay’s replacement for the popular Will Smith and Martin Lawrence action-comedy franchise.

Since his breakout critical darling Narc in 2002, Carnahan has bounced between dark and gritty thrillers, such as The Grey, and mindless popcorn entertainment, like Smoking Aces and The A-Team. The latter films not only demonstrate the director’s style of slick, adrenaline-rush action but also his ability to tell compelling stories that subvert expectations. Yet, his out-of-the-box approach to ongoing film franchises has often put him at odds with the stars, and Bad Boys for Life was no exception.

Joe Carnahan Has a History of Creative Differences With A-List Stars

The third installment of Bad Boys had a rocky road to production. Bad Boys II was slammed by critics and proved less profitable at the box office given its $130 million budget. Within the 17-year gap after the sequel’s release, the salaries of Smith, Lawrence, and director Bay had all grown astronomically due to their stand-alone successes in movies. When Bay opted to relinquish the director’s chair due to his busy schedule with Transformers sequels, Sony needed a new director to revive the franchise and evolve the story of Miami detectives Burnett and Lowery in a new decade.

Carnahan was once a rising A-list director shortly after the release of Narc. Studios and major stars like Tom Cruise pursued the Michigan-born filmmaker to bring his unique cinematic style to their pet projects. Though he found box office success with Smoking Aces and The Grey, Carnahan was also growing a negative reputation in Hollywood, beginning with his creative clash with Cruise that cost him Mission: Impossible III and later dropping out of the remake of Death Wish after disagreements over the producers’ choice of Bruce Willis to headline. Despite these career setbacks, Carnahan had the eye and the attitude to match up with Smith and Lawrence’s streetwise maverick cops to make him a great choice for Bad Boys for Life.

Joe Carnahan’s Script Ideas Were Retained in ‘Bad Boys for Life’

Upon Carnahan’s hiring in 2016, Sony had plans to film the third and fourth Bad Boys sequels back-to-back. Not only did the director publicize pre-vis shots of key action scenes on social media, including the motorcycle chase on the Miami Causeway, but he also revealed to Collider his plans to show how Smith and Lawrence’s legacy characters deal with aging on the job as multiple new villains would be gunning after them. He spent the next two years working with Smith and producer Jerry Bruckheimer on revising the script. Originally scheduled for a February 17, 2017 release, Bad Boys for Life saw multiple release date shifts well into 2019. Then the project reached a breaking point.

Michael Bay Might Have Introduced the World to ‘Bad Boys,’ but There’s a Good Reason He Didn’t Continue With the Franchise

How the Bad Boys franchise lost the Bayhem.

Though Carnahan praised Smith’s work ethic as a producer in 2016, he sang a different tune three years later when he left the threequel due to disagreements with the star. He explained to Collider Live that Bad Boys for Life had reached the stage where “what we were doing at that point was the law of diminishing returns.” Though he never detailed the exact reason for his disagreement with Smith, he sympathized with him regarding the pressures of being the front and center lead who has to sell the movie in his name and likeness. Any subtle subversion to what fans expect in a popular franchise could likely result in a serious backlash, as evidenced by Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Carnahan is not the kind of director who plays it safe. Even the later half of The A-Team saw popular characters get creatively altered from their television counterparts.

Though he was ultimately replaced by Adil and Bilall, Carnahan was still credited as a co-screenwriter, with several of his ideas preserved but altered: the agism angle, the motorcycle chase, and the introduction of the young AMMO team to help support Burnett and Lowery against Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo) and her assassin son Armando (Jacob Scipio). Those remaining traces of Carnahan’s story ideas allowed the filmmaker to retain some of his cinematic DNA in the Bad Boys franchise and exemplified how he played his part in evolving the films from their clichéd buddy comedy roots to an action film series with more narrative substance.