The directors of the #1 movie in the world, ‘Bad Boys For Life’, have been approached to bring their magic touch to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (billed as Adil & Bilall) are the duo who helped reunite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the sequel, which is not only a financial hit, having made over $200 million in two weeks, but a critical and crowd pleaser. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 77%, but its audience score is 96%. Opening weekend audiences gave it a glowing A CinemaScore and 5 out of 5 stars via PostTrak.
‘Bad Boys For Life’ is successful because it balances action with humor and heart. Sound familiar? That pretty much sums up the success of the MCU.
But don’t’ get too excited just yet. It seems that the conversation between El Arbi & Fallah and Disney/Marvel has been strictly preliminary. As El Arbi told ComicBook.com:
“Well there’s nothing concrete. They just met us. The said they liked the movie and they just told us, ‘Yo, what do you wanna do? Let’s find something to work together on.’ So there’s nothing really planned yet, it was just like a meeting. But yeah, we’ll see if we find something cool.”
Believe it or not, ‘Bad Boys For Life’ was the duo’s studio debut, having only created TV shows indie pictures in the past, including 2018’s ‘Gangsta’, 2015’s ‘Black’, and 2014’s ‘Image’. They recently completed the pilot of a TV adaptation of the Image Comic series ‘Scalped’. (That series is not superhero or sci-fi in any way, though, so it doesn’t necessarily indicate how they would do with a Marvel project.)
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It’s pretty clear that there isn’t one specific project that El Arbi and Fallah are being eyed to take on. It sounds like Marvel is just keen to work with Hollywood’s latest hit-makers… and following the success of ‘Bad Boys For Life’, expect EVERY studio to take an interest in them.
But considering that the pair have also worked in TV, on ‘Scalped’ as well as ‘Snowfall’, Disney+ is also an option, as El Arbi said:
“Now with Disney+ is has all evolved so much that there’s so much you can do. You can do a movie or you can do a TV show. And we’ve been so busy with Bad Boys that we’ve not explored everything yet. So what we’re going to do now, me and Bilall, is we’re going to check out all they got and we’d love to find something to work with them on, but it’s not yet clear what that would be.”
Marvel does have ‘Blade’ in the works, but no director has been announced. The studio wants a woman to helm ‘Captain Marvel 2’, so that’s out. Jeremy Slater is writing the ‘Moon Knight’ Disney+ show, but there doesn’t seem to be a director attached yet. And then there are probably a dozen or so other films and TV series in the works that we don’t know about yet. So check back for any updates!
Did you see ‘Bad Boys For Life’? What Marvel project would you like to see its directors take on?
