How Bad Boys For Life Became The Biggest Box Office Hit Of Hollywood's Lost Year

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

"2020 at the box office will be known as the 'year of the asterisk,' with virtually every known measure and metric for box office performance being completely rethought and recalibrated." These were the words of Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian speaking to CNN in October 2020. At that time, the industry was contending with a months-long, global shutdown, with movie theaters on life support as the pandemic raged on. Yes, every title released in 2020 will always come with an asterisk but even with that, one movie had to come out on top during Hollywood's lost year. That movie was "Bad Boys for Life."

Action director extraordinaire Michael Bay helmed 1995's "Bad Boys" and 2003's "Bad Boys II," with the first film ranking as a big success and the sequel somewhat hampered by its very large budget (more on that in a bit). Still, after several years, Sony decided to officially move forward with a third installment in the franchise in 2009, with Peter Craig to pen an initial version of "Bad Boys 3." It would be more than a decade before the film would actually come to fruition. Entirely by accident, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's third go around as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett would secure its place in cinema history as Hollywood's biggest movie during the industry's worst year ever.

In honor of the release of "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" next weekend, we're looking back at "Bad Boys for Life." We'll go over why the movie took so long to happen in the first place, how a pair of relatively unknown directors ended up stepping in for Bay, how they managed to make a certified blockbuster on a sub-$100 million budget, what happened when the movie hit theaters, what happened shortly after it hit theaters, and what lessons we can learn from it several years removed. Let's dig in, shall we?

As is often the case, "Bad Boys 3" found itself stuck in development hell for several years. Between screenwriters coming and going and Will Smith's busy schedule as one of the most in-demand leading men in the business, it proved challenging to have all of the pieces come together at the right time. Even so, more than a decade after "Bad Boys II" hit theaters, optimism persisted.

"I believe so. Yes," Lawrence said in 2014 when asked by Conan O'Brien if "Bad Boys 3" was still going to happen. "I just talked to [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer yesterday and he said it's real, they're working on the script, they're getting close and it all looks good." Earlier that same year, Bruckheimer explained that so much of it came down to bad timing.

"We'll get Sony real excited to make the movie, and then Will [Smith] is off doing two movies. And then, Will will come back and be real excited about it, and Sony will say, 'Well, maybe it's not the time for this.' And then, 'Ride Along' came out and was a big hit, and now they're all excited to make the movie, but Will is off doing something else.

As Marcus Burnett might say, "s*** just got real" when Sony announced in 2015 that both "Bad Boys 3" and "Bad Boys 4" had locked down release dates in 2017 and 2019, respectively. Six years after the sequel officially entered development, the studio was doubling down. Be that as it may, things once again stalled. Lawrence, speaking in 2017, cast doubt on the sequel ever coming to fruition.

"I don't think we're going to get one, not the way everything's turning out. Will is off doing another movie, and I don't think it's going to happen."

At the time, Smith was coming off of "Suicide Squad," which was a surprisingly big hit, and was filming "Bright" for Netflix. The actor had also been cast as Genie in the live-action "Aladdin" remake, with "Gemini Man" and the animated "Spies in Disguise" on his to-do list. Smith was busy as ever. But at long last, the sequel was given the green light by Sony in October 2018 under the title "Bad Boys for Life."

Joe Carnahan (The Grey) had, at one point, been attached to write and direct the film. He was even given a screenplay credit in the version that made it to screen. However, Carnahan ended up vacating the director's chair over creative differences. In 2019, the filmmaker said Smith didn't want to make the version of the film he wrote.

"I love Will, he's a great guy. I just know myself. And I thought what we were doing at that point was the law of diminishing returns. I wasn't servicing the story that I was really excited about telling, that the studio had greenlit. And again, this isn't to throw shade at Will — it's your face on the poster, it's your name on the poster, you need to do things the way you want them done."

Carnahan added that the ending of his script was "one of the best endings I've ever written in any movie." Parts of his story remained, but the one we got sees the wife and son of a drug lord seeking revenge, with Mike Lowrey caught in the mix. Mike and Marcus team up with a special tactical squad named AMMO to bring them to justice.

With Carnahan no longer in the director's chair and Bay busy making "6 Underground" for Netflix, Sony turned to a pair of relative unknowns in the form of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah to finally get this project across the finish line.

Arbi and Fallah had directed music videos and episodic TV before, but this was far and away the biggest project of their careers up to that point. In the years since, they've handled several other blockbuster-level projects, including the now-infamous canceled "Batigirl" movie for DC. But at the time, they had to convincingly fill the shoes once occupied by Michael Bay, helming a movie with one of the biggest stars in history. Fortunately, they had learned to make a lot out of a little in the past and rose to the challenge.

"We learned in Belgium how to make our movies bigger than they are," Fallah said in an interview with /Film around the release of "Bad Boys for Life" in 2019. "We had like $1.2 million or $3 million, but you want to make it look as epic as possible and international as possible and the use of color really helps so much." Arbi built on that, saying that some of the epic action in the film as we see it was a combination of great cinematography and creativity.

"Our cinematographer, he is a genius in light, and he just enhanced the whole time, and specifically that action sequence where you have the smoke, well, we didn't have money to do that. It was not planned that it was that elaborate of an action sequence. That is one where we really had to be creative."

In the end, they managed to make the film for $90 million, which is a whole lot less than most modern blockbusters — especially considering the salary that Will Smith commands. Not to mention that Bay spent $130 million on the action epic that was "Bad Boys II" well over a decade earlier. Despite the relative limitations, the duo crafted a crowd-pleaser that looked bigger than it was.

Familiar faces like Joe Pantoliano's Captain Howard returned alongside new faces like Vanessa Hudgens, Paola Nunez, Jacob Scipio, and even a cameo from DJ Khaled. Ultimately though, audiences were turning up based on their level of interest in seeing Smith and Lawrence reunited after all these years. And it was more than a bit of a gamble as "Bad Boys II" made $273 million worldwide back in 2003 — barely double its hulking budget. Would moviegoers still care 17 years later? It turns out yes, they absolutely did.

While Smith had been associated with summer blockbusters for years, "Bad Boys for Life" hit theaters on January 17, 2020. The benefit of that date is that it was facing very little by way of major competition, save for Robert Downey Jr.'s "Dolittle" which, thankfully for Sony, bombed. Arbi and Fallah's big-budget debut opened to $62.5 million, easily taking the top spot for the weekend. That number grew to $73 million when accounting for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. That number far exceeded projections, which set the film up for one heck of a run.

It held the top spot for two more weekends, easily fending off "Gretel & Hansel" and "The Gentlemen." It wouldn't surrender the crown until "Birds of Prey" entered the fold. By then it hardly mattered. "Bad Boys for Life" finished its run with $206.3 million domestically to go with $220.2 million internationally for a grand total of $426.5 million. It, as a result, became the biggest domestic January release ever, topping "Paul Blart: Mall Cop."

Sony seemed to know that they had a hit as they quickly set about developing "Bad Boys 4" just as the third installment was hitting theaters. Unfortunately, the party would be somewhat short-lived as a dark cloud was looming that — not to be too dramatic — would change Hollywood forever.

What is perhaps most impressive about "Bad Boys for Life" is that it made the money it made even though its theatrical run was cut a little short. By early March, the world was reckoning with the relatives of COVID-19, with a pandemic taking hold. It became crystal clear that this was going to impact the movie business greatly as people weren't supposed to be gathered together in close quarters. Movies like "No Time to Die" were delayed, with many other big films to follow. Soon thereafter, theaters all around the country were forced to shut their doors for an indefinite amount of time.

Films such as "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "The Invisible Man" got to (mostly) finish their runs in theaters, while others such as Pixar's "Onward" were cut hugely short. Virtually no other major Hollywood movies would arrive until Russell Crowe's "Unhinged" and, more importantly, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" much later in the year. For much of 2020, it was movies like "The Wretched" keeping the box office on life support, mostly thanks to drive-in theaters. Meanwhile, with theaters closed down, Universal Pictures released "Trolls World Tour" as the first premium VOD movie ever, kicking off a trend that the industry is still reckoning with to this day.

Because of this, all of the big movies that were supposed to arrive in 2020 didn't come out until 2021 or 2022. That being the case, "Bad Boys for Life" finished the year as the highest-grossing film domestically. The only movies that made more globally were the Chinese blockbuster "The Eight Hundred" ($461.4 million) and the Japanese anime "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train" ($453.2 million). Even though there will always be an asterisk attached, this movie has its odd, yet significant place in cinema history.

Looking back even just a small handful of years later, this movie's success is downright fascinating to consider. Had Sony released it even a few weeks later its fate might have been grim. Had they set it for summer like a classic Will Smith blockbuster of old? It would have been pushed to 2021 and might have had a tough time finding its audience as the box office struggled then — and is still struggling now — to find a sure footing in the aftermath of the pandemic.

In reflection, the best thing Sony did was to not be stubborn and say "Our Will Smith franchise movie must come out in the summer." January feels like an oft-ignored month that can be fertile ground for the right film. It's the month that allowed "Taken" to become a hit and turn Liam Neeson into an action star. This was the exact right film at the right time. It would be easy to imagine a studio feeling the need to flex muscle and release this in summer just because that's what has traditionally been done. Instead, Sony looked smart as hell and benefited from a lack of direct competition.

Beyond that, it's also good that Sony waited for the right version of "Bad Boys 3" and the right filmmakers to make it happen. Especially since that decision gave us a new, exciting directing duo who can (hopefully) churn out hits for years on end. More than that, they managed to make this movie on a much lower budget, which benefited everyone in the end. If this one had ballooned to $200 million, as is so often the case these days, we'd be talking about it very differently. Instead, we get to watch Mike and Marcus take at least one more ride together. Everybody wins.