Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black remains one of the most purely entertaining blockbuster of the 1990's, a $90m sci-fi buddy movie that features plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and exciting action sequences, held together by the sparkling chemistry between the mismatched duo of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. While the two sequels failed to recapture the magic of the original, the franchise has earned well over $1.6bn at the box office, which has compensated for the ever-increasing budgets. After Men in Black grossed $589m at the box office a sequel was all-but-inevitable. Five years later came the incredibly disappointing follow-up, which upped the budget to $140m but was barely half as good as Agents J and K's first outing, with the rapport between the two leads being the movie's only saving grace. Thanks to poor critical reaction and declining box office takings, it would be ten years before another Men in Black movie would hit theaters, which would also be the most expensive yet. Thanks to going into production without a finished script, constant on-set rewrites and even a four-month filming shutdown, the budget for Men in Black 3 swelled to $215m. Luckily for the studio, the decade-long wait and addition of 3D saw the trilogy-closing chapter become the highest-earning entry in the franchise with a box office gross of nearly $625m.
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