Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have revealed they will be reuniting for the fourth instalment in their famous buddy-cop film franchise, Bad Boys.

Both actors shared an excitable video on social media, showing Smith arriving at Lawrence’s house to reveal the news to fans. Development on the sequel, which follows 2020’s Bad Boys For Life, was reportedly put on hold after Smith assaulted Chris Rock at last year’s Oscars. But on Tuesday Sony Pictures announced that the as-yet untitled film is in early pre-production.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is reportedly returning for the fourth film, as are Bad Boys For Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The Bad Boys franchise follows the adventures of two detectives in the Miami Police Department, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, played by Smith and Lawrence respectively. The film will be Smith’s second major big-screen endeavour following the now infamous slap incident last March – after which he was banned from Academy events for 10 years.

Check out the official trailer for Emancipation starring Will Smith!

The Will Smith-produced film Brilliance is moving forward at Paramount with a new director, The Wrap reports. Ms. Marvel director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is reportedly in talks to direct the movie, produced by Smith’s Westbrook Studios.

At one point, Smith was slated to star in the film, though at this stage, he’s not formally committed to appear. Per The Wrap, the film is based on novel of the same name by Marcus Sakey. “It imagines a future in which 1% of the world’s population is born with special mental and physical gifts, leading the world’s governments to track them and have branded them ‘brilliants.’ The main character is special agent who also has brilliant gifts and is tasked with tracking down a violent criminal brilliant, or ‘abnorm,’ who wishes to spark a civil war between ordinary humans and those with special gifts.”

Smith’s next project is slated to be Emancipation, a Civil War drama directed by Antoine Fuqua, though the New York Times reported Apple is debating on whether to roll it out this year or wait until 2023 to let the backlash from the Oscar’s slap die down. Even still, Smith remains one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, pulling in $35 million for the upcoming flick.

The movie is directed by Antoine Fuqua, and was expected to be the first release following the 2022 Oscars slap incident involving Chris Rock, which resulted in him being banned from attending the Oscars and other Academy-related events for 10 years.

It was expecting to be Apple’s next potentially big awards season favorite after CODA. A source familiar with the situation said “it’s the unspoken truth” that the action-drama will not arrive in 2022. They also revealed there have been “ongoing internal discussions between Apple executives and the filmmakers on how a release in the fall could move forward, but it seems highly unlikely,” via the report.

An anonymous filmmaker who saw an early preview of the footage sang its praises, and said “Will’s going to win back-to-back.”

Despite the controversy, multiple sources also told Variety that the movie is still deep in post-production and may not be ready in time for a 2022 debut anyway amid pandemic delays. There is also a packed schedule for Apple in the second half of the year, which may have also caused the shuffling.

Following the news that Netflix had quietly backed away from working with Will Smith on an upcoming movie, it’s being reported that another project of his is being delayed.

Bloomberg reports that National Geographic is delaying production on the nature series Pole to Pole, which is going to follow Will as he visits both the North Pole and the South pole.

The series “was to have begun shooting in three weeks. Work will now be pushed back until the fall.”

It seems Bloomberg’s original report had also mentioned that the sequel to Bright was canceled as the news has spread around the internet, but the info is now missing from their website.

Bright was a big hit for Netflix in 2017 and a sequel was in development, but it was reported that plans for the film had been canceled. It’s possible that the news wasn’t actually true and that’s why it was removed from the original article.