Will Smith Confirms Bad Boys 3 & First Full World Tour

It’s been over twelve years (and four Transformers movies) since Michael Bay’s Bad Boys 2 released in theaters in the summer of 2003 and nearly every year since we’ve heard rumblings and quotes teasing that Bad Boys 3 would be coming… eventually. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has been working on it off and on rather actively, as we covered reports of new script drafts frequently over the last decade.

Then came Joe Carnahan, director of The Grey and The A-Team, who entered talks to write and direct the third installment, followed by Sony Pictures officially adding Bad Boys 3 and Bad Boys 4 to its updated release slate. We still don’t know to what extent Will Smith will be involved, but he essentially confirmed this week that he will be back as well and that Bad Boys 3 will begin shooting soon.

Someone forgot to tell Beats 1 Radio host Zane Lowe, though, as he said he had heard a “rumor” (reminder: it was officially announced and dated by Sony two months ago, at the time of writing this) of another Bad Boys when he spoke with Will Smith. Smith’s response, said with a smile, was a bit of a strangely worded re-confirmation: “There’s a very, very, very strong possibility that you will be seeing a Bad Boys within the next 12-16 months.”

That date range does obviously include the currently scheduled February 17, 2017 date for Bad Boys 3 but the real question is whether or not Will Smith will co-star alongside Martin Lawrence as the lead. The trades reported in August, after Sony set the dates, that it was unclear at the time whether Will Smith will act in the next two movies or serve only as producer.

If two more Bad Boys films are part of Sony’s tentpole plans, we’re betting Smith needs to be involved as a lead to make that a marketable reality. As such, we’ll take this as a tease for what we expect will be a near future announcement regarding the cast and shooting dates.

For Will Smith fans however, the more exciting announcement may be that he’s going on his first ever full-length world tour to perform some new music. Previous partial tours were always scheduled around his TV and film work and he says he’s “terrified” but has a “whole lot of heart to share.”