The Men in Black 3 production saga began late last year. New York offered to rebate 30 percent of production costs incurred in the state, as long as filming began by the end of 2010. Sony, looking to capitalize on these necessary financial breaks, began filming the movie in November. The only problem – there was no finished script.
The plan from there was to shoot the present day sequences while writing was completed on the time traveling bits. That would have worked, except the start date of the second half of production was continually pushed back when script problems came up. According to indieWIRE, no fewer than four screenwriters (including Jurassic Park‘s David Koepp at least twice) tried to pull a script together.
As production continues to drag on in New York, costs are rising. As reported by The Wrap, the budget now exceeds $215 million, including those all-important tax breaks.
If true, this would put the Men in Black 3 budget at over twice that of its predecessor, which made $442 million on a $140 million budget. Sony is undoubtedly banking on the hope that Will Smith, who has become one of the highest-grossing actors in the world and Newsweek‘s Most Powerful Actor on the Planet (2007) since the original Men in Black, still has the box office pull to make the expense worth it.
If reports from earlier in production are to be believed, Smith is an enormous factor in that expense. His gigantic $9,000 a month trailer and entourage can’t be helping Sony cut costs.
In any case, Men in Black 3’s release date, May 25th, 2012, hasn’t been pushed back yet. The film, which will be in 3D, features Smith reprising his role as Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones again as Agent K. Josh Brolin steps in to play K in time traveling sequences. (Click for shots of Brolin channeling Jones on set).
Not much is known about the movie besides that, but we can probably expect more information during Comic-Con in late July.
How can Men in Black 3 hope to justify such an inflated budget? Will the series survive?