With MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL looking to be another disappointment of 2019's summer box-office, audiences are looking at just why the film has received such a lackluster response. A new report from THR may shed a little light on what went wrong as it alleges that the production was plagued by infighting and constant rewrites.
Back in 2016, Sony Pictures was debating whether or not to relaunch MEN IN BLACK or move forward with the MEN IN BLACK/21 JUMP STREET crossover. In the end, they decided to jump on the MEN IN BLACK relaunch which would see the franchise move beyond Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Sony was reportedly quite pleased with the script by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. "The script was good," one insider told THR. "You don’t attract Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson if the script isn’t good." Those early drafts of the script were said to be "edgier and more timely" with the story dealing with immigration, and at one point it featured a musical group who could merge into one villain set to face off against the MIB. After the executive overseeing the project departed and was never replaced, MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL director F. Gary Gray and franchise producer Walter Parkes began battling for control amidst clashing visions. Parkes soon began overseeing rewrites of the film, and one source claimed that new pages would arrive daily and cause confusion. Both Marcum & Holloway were on set during this time as Parkes sent in rewrites, and Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth each reportedly hired their own dialogue writers. Too many cooks.
F. Gary Gray also apparently tried to exit the production several times before Sony was able to convince him to stay, but Parkes and Gray butted heads over just about everything, including colour correcting. At the end of the day, two cuts were tested, one by Gray and the other by Parkes, with Parkes' version being chosen. Some sources pointed the finger at the studio for a lack of guidance in resolving the disagreements between Gray and Parkes, which may have set MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL on its path to mediocrity. "The urgency to see this was never there and the movie needed a greater reason to be," a Sony executive said, before adding that the franchise will likely continue: "Aliens walking among us is at its core a great idea. Men in Black will be revisited again at one point, either as a series, as streaming, or as another movie."
MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray.