Some years back, it seemed highly likely that Martin Lawrence & Will Smith would be reuniting for a third installment in the Bad Boys franchise.

  

The threequel had a title (Bad Boys for Life), a writer & potential director in Joe Carnahan, & a planned release date of July 2017, which was pushed back to January 2018 & then November 2018.

But, earlier this year, Carnahan exited the project due to scheduling issues, while Sony pulled the film  from its release slate last month, making Martin Lawrence to state that he no longer believes a third entry in the action-comedy series is ever going to happen. However, producer Jerry Bruckheimer remains confident, telling Yahoo! Movies that:

“Well, we’ve been developing it for I don’t know how many years now & we had a period of time where it got pretty close & then it drifted away a little bit & hopefully it will drift back again. We have a new writer on it who’s working on it right now, so that gives me encouragement.”

The first Bad Boys was released in 1995, with Bad Boys II following in 2003. Between them, the 2 movies grossed $414.7 million.