Few others can rival the sheer magnitude of franchises that Jerry Bruckheimer has under his belt. Not only is he behind immensely popular film series like Pirates of the Caribbean, but he’s also the shepherd of the long-running TV shows CSI and The Amazing Race. While we know that future installments in the Pirates series and the Beverly Hills Cop franchise are firmly in the works, a couple of other lucrative franchises remain in a state of uncertainty.
We recently spoke with Bruckheimer at WonderCon in anticipation of the upcoming horror film Deliver Us from Evil, and during the course of the conversation, the producer gave updates on the status of Bad Boys 3 and National Treasure 3. He revealed the reason why Bad Boys 3 has been so difficult to get going, and disclosed that he actually just received a draft for the first act of National Treasure 3. Hit the jump to read his full comments.
Director Michael Bay’s feature directorial debut Bad Boys was a big box office success in 1995, going on to gross $141 million worldwide. Bay and his stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence returned for a much, much bigger sequel Bad Boys II in 2003 to the tune of $273 million worldwide, and so the prospect of a third film seemed like a safe bet given the box office success of the first two. However, solid movement on Bad Boys 3 has thus far failed to materialize.
Though one would think the busy schedules of Bay, Smith and Lawrence (or their superstar pricetags) would’ve been the hindrance keeping Bad Boys 3 from happening, Bruckheimer actually told us the main issue has been a matter of bad timing:
“It’s so funny because 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. It’s just trying to get everybody together to make it. But, we’re working on the script. We have a lot of faith and hope that we’ll do it.”
Most recently Sony enlisted David Guggenheim to pen the script for Bad Boys 3, so maybe once Smith’s schedule opens up the film can finally move forward. Nevertheless, it appears that this one is still a ways off.
As for National Treasure 3, all involved have made no secret of the fact that the problem with getting the sequel off the ground is figuring out the story. Bruckheimer echoed this sentiment when we spoke to him, but he revealed that they recently cracked the first act of the script:
“Those are the hardest movies to make because they’re all based on clues. It’s so difficult to work them out. But, we got a first act in [on Friday], and Jon [Turteltaub] was very excited about it and I’m very excited about it. Hopefully, the first act will lead into the second act and the third act, and we’ll get this thing going.”
Turtletaub said last year that he thought National Treasure 3 would be shooting within two years and Nicolas Cage is certainly game to return, so we could feasibly be seeing concrete movement on the sequel later this year if this draft of the script pans out.
By Adam Chitwood
