Risky Business has word that Etan Cohen is writing the second Men in Black sequel for Sony, which is hoping to head into production early next year. It sounds like none of the big three, ie. Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and director Barry Sonnenfeld, have deals yet, but Sony’s pushing ahead anyway. As with the first sequel, checks for massive sums of money always win out. It seems like the best chance this has of being made comes thanks to Smith’s unusual inability to get one of his couple dozen developing projects in a state ready to shoot. This year was the first since 1994 to be absent a Will Smith feature, and it looks like 2010 will be the same.
For me, Men in Black II destroyed my interest in the franchise. The first film was great fun, but the second was dreadful. It was lazy, slapsticky and rehashed too many gags and situations from the first. Even the makeup, special effects and alien designs became cruder and uglier, right alongside the script. It took every joke too far and drove them into the ground. I can’t say having one of the writers of Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy on board fills me with much hope either. Both of those films were less than hilarious and lacked solid character fundamentals, which is largely what made the original Men in Black so great. It was just about the characters.
