{"id":6550,"date":"2019-04-22T20:28:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T20:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/?p=6550"},"modified":"2019-04-22T20:28:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T20:28:58","slug":"heres-why-bad-boys-for-life-writer-joe-carnahan-isnt-directing-it-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/why-joe-carnahan-left-bad-boys-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s Why ‘Bad Boys For Life’ Writer Joe Carnahan Isn’t Directing It Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

The A-Team<\/em> director Joe Carnahan seemed like a perfect fit to bring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s long-gestating\u00a0Bad Boys For Life<\/em><\/a> to the big screen. In 2015, he wrote an action-packed script that reunites cops Lowrey and Burnett for more Miami-based gun fights and car chases. But, in 2017, he vacated the director’s chair and directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah stepped in.<\/p>\n

So why did the filmmaker leave the project? Turns out, it’s that ol’ chestnut of “creative differences” with star Will Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Will, he\u2019s a great guy,\u201d Carnahan recently told\u00a0Collider<\/a>.<\/em> \u201cI\u00a0just know myself. And I thought what we were doing at that point was the law of diminishing returns. I wasn\u2019t servicing the story that I was really excited about telling, that the studio, [Sony], had greenlit. And again, this isn\u2019t to throw shade at Will — it\u2019s [his] face on the poster, it\u2019s [his] name on the poster, you need to do things the way you want them done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carnahan also added that the ending he scripted for the film is \u201cone of the best endings I\u2019ve ever written in any movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he is no longer involved with the project, the spine of Carnahan’s story seems to have remained, with Smith and Lawrence’s veteran cops forced to work with a younger team of hot shots.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an ammo team, the kind of young go-getters — like the\u00a021 Jump Street<\/em>\u00a0kids,” Carnahan revealed. “And there\u2019s still the idea of these guys being kind of 50 and maybe over-the-hill\u2026 Like that kind of stuff. There\u2019s still all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the second threequel the writer-director left due to creative issues and trying to satisfy the star power on the marquee. Following the success of Carnahan’s breakthrough feature\u00a0Narc<\/em>, producer Tom Cruise tapped the filmmaker to helm\u00a0Mission: Impossible III<\/em>. Once Carnahan left the film — which was set to star Kenneth Branagh as the villain<\/a> — J.J. Abrams stepped in to helm that 2006 release. Carnahan reportedly salvaged some of his\u00a0M:I:3<\/em> action beats for\u00a0The A-Team<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Carnahan is an exceptional action director, capable of injecting set pieces with a strong dose of emotional stakes. (See his underrated masterpiece,\u00a0The Grey<\/em>, as proof.) He also seems to collect a resume full of projects (like the\u00a0Death Wish\u00a0<\/em>remake) that he had to abandon because he and the studio — or both the studio and stars — couldn’t see eye-to-eye. We would love to see his unique approach to character-first action storytelling get the blockbuster budget it deserves. Fingers crossed his long-awaited remake of\u00a0The Raid<\/em> doesn’t hit similar speed bumps.<\/p>\n

Bad Boys For Life<\/em> crashes into theaters January 17, 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The A-Team director Joe Carnahan seemed like a perfect fit to bring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s long-gestating\u00a0Bad Boys For Life to the big screen. In 2015, he wrote an action-packed script that reunites cops Lowrey and Burnett for more Miami-based gun fights and car chases. But, in 2017, he vacated the director’s chair and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":6559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[37,46],"class_list":["post-6550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-news","tag-newspage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6550"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6563,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions\/6563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}