Will Smith's Bad Boys franchise made a surprising return in 2020 with Bad Boys For Life. This popularity not only sparked a second sequel, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, in 2024, but it also brought in new viewers for the series' original films. The original Bad Boys are currently at the top of the Tubi chart, thirty years after their debut.
 |
| Will Smith and Martin Lawrence |
Bad Boys, directed by Michael Bay and released in 1995, was the type of huge, brazen action film you would anticipate from the always amazing director of Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and the first Transformers films.
Naturally, Bay was well-known for making music videos and advertisements around the time Bad Boys was released. One such video was the epic for the powerful Meat Loaf song I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That), which was inspired by Beauty and the Beast. His debut feature film, Bad Boys, did not receive the best reviews, but its box office performance demonstrated that Bay could draw a large audience.
Despite having a budget of up to $23 million, Bad Boys grossed over $141 million worldwide. As an aside, Bay would get nearly that much in revenue as the budget for Bad Boys II, but that is a another matter.
The "Bad Boys" franchise keeps delivering
 |
| Will Smith & Martin Lawrence |
The problem with reviewers is that they occasionally lose sight of what exactly viewers want from a film. Fans of action seek action. Overall, if the bangs are big, the violence is brutal, and the good guys win, a film will likely appeal to a wide majority of people. It is nice to have a plotline that wasn't made up by a 10-year-old during recess and ended up on the desk of a Hollywood studio executive by a gust of wind.
Bad Boys are like that. After the film's popularity, Bay returned to helm the helm for a follow-up in 2003, which retained the original film's 78% audience rating but receiving an even worse Tomatometer score of 23%. With a budget of $130 million and a box office receipt of little more than $230 million, the franchise's lackluster second film seemed to have snuffed out all hopes for a follow-up.
As they say, "a change is as good as a rest," and both contributed to the franchise's spectacular 2020 rebirth with Bad Boys for Life. The late sequel, which was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah instead of Bay, was a huge success in every way. As one of the last major blockbusters to hit theaters before the Covid epidemic, it made a staggering $426.5 million worldwide on a modest budget of $90 million, earning 76% from critics and 96% from viewers, respectively. Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the follow-up this year, had almost the same outcomes, with a 97% audience rating and an additional $400 million in revenue.
As long as "there is a story to be told," Smith and Lawrence said in June 2024 that they would be open to returning for a fifth film. Though he stated at the time that it primarily hinged on how well the most recent film performed at the box office, producer Jerry Bruckheimer was excited about the prospect of adding another film to the franchise. The only issue left is when Bad Boys 5 will be officially released, as we already know the solution to that portion of the puzzle.