People have not forgotten how Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards and the incident isn’t going to go away from public consciousness anytime soon.
To no one’s surprise, Will Smith has lost multiple projects due to the controversy, but you can exclude Bad Boys 4 from that list.
According to Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony’s Motion Picture Group, the earlier reports were “inaccurate” and that the “movie’s been in development and still is.” Rothman then added that “there weren’t any brakes to pump because the car wasn’t moving.” He ended his statement about Bad Boys 4 that the moment “was an example of a very good person having a very bad moment, in front of the world,” and that he believes “in forgiveness and redemption.”
This isn’t to say that we can expect the fourth Bad Boys film to hit theaters anytime soon or that Sony won’t sideline it. All this means is that it’s not canceled yet like Bright 2 and the Deadshot solo film.
1995’s Bad Boys was the movie that propelled Will Smith’s career from rapper and TV star to a Hollywood A-lister that could do no wrong. The film went to get a sequel in 2003 and, finally, in 2020, a threequel, which premiered just as the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic started shutting down theaters across the globe. However, it still made $426.5 million against a $90 million budget. Naturally, this warranted a sequel.
As of the moment, Smith’s first project, Emancipation, will come out sometime in 2023 on Apple TV Plus.
