Etan Cohen hired to write MEN IN BLACK 3!
Now the hard work starts as he has to come up with a killer screenplay to entice Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to return for a third outing.
God knows who's interested in sitting through a Men in Black 3 but Sony keep throwing money at the project so they obviously think someone must be. The Hollywood Reporter say that Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) has been hired to scribe the next outing of Agents Jay and Kay and that series director Barry Sonnefeld is attached (but hasn't signed anything) for the project that was officially announced as a "Go" on 02.04.09. Cohen is a good hiring and his background writing with Mike Judge (he contributed to Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill and Idiocracy) has left him with a smart creative comedic brain, and he could come up with a killer screenplay right here. He's hungry and has been waiting to be let out on a leash like this for some time.
Men in Black series has grossed $1 billion for Sony, so a third movie is seen as easy money... but only if they can secure Will Smith to return. His job of course is the pressure one for the whole project as he has to come up with a smart enough story to entice Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to come back for a third outing, or his work will simply never be filmed. It's hard to imagine the project going ahead without Smith especially, and Sony will know that and will have told Cohen as much himself. Cohen also has the ticking time bomb of Sony wanting to film this next Spring, as Will Smith right now has a rare window of opportunity as he hasn't committed to film anything next year... though he has flirted with MANY (as we spoke of here). Cohen is not only competing with a franchise that looked dead creatively after 2002 but also against sequels to nearly every high profile Smith movie he ever filmed, and a couple of original projects to boot. Not to mention anything else he might get offered between now and the end of the year. Though THR's mysterious sources say in recent days there's been a buzz that Smith might be interested in doing this but take that for what you will. The Men in Black series has earned over $1 billion worldwide from two movies, so of course despite my questioning in opening this article, I'm not dumb enough to doubt that Sony are financially wise to go ahead with a third flick. Just creatively, after the mega sucker punch to the ribs that the awful Men in Black 2 was seven years ago, I personally can think of a lot more things I would rather spend £8 to sit through. But then, I didn't pay to see Transformers 2 and that made $832 million worldwide, so what do I know?