Will Smith’s $100 Million Blockbuster Officially Crosses Surprise Milestone

It’s been a quiet few years for Will Smith, who still maintains his status as one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Smith will soon be seen starring in a new Netflix action movie, Fast and Loose, but it’s still unclear at this time when the film will be released. Original Bad Boys director Michael Bay was once set to direct the film, but heed the project in the early stages after reports cited creative differences between him and Smith — Bay wanted a more serious movie, and Smith wanted a movie based more around comedy, and Netflix sided with Smith. He’s even set to star in a long-awaited sequel to his sci-fi classic, I Am Legend, along with recent Oscar-winner Michael B. Jordan, but the film is seemingly stuck in the development stage with no start of production in sight.

Will Smith’s recent hiatus from acting isn’t because his last movie wasn’t a success, though — in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Back in 2024, Smith starred as Mike Lowrey for the fourth and possibly final time in Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the epic action thriller co-starring Martin Lawrence as Marcus Burnett. The film was directed by the duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who previously worked on one of the most underrated Marvel Disney+ shows, Ms. Marvel, starring Iman Vellani. Bad Boys: Ride or Die was a Sony Pictures production, so at the end of its theatrical and VOD runs, it was added to Netflix’s streaming library. The film has now migrated to Hulu in America, but it’s still on Netflix globally, where it’s currently on a 70-day hot streak in the top 10.

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive
the trilogy, and probably headline it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are
so careful never to be the reason you start.

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who
  honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one
  against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and
  then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels
  and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do the
  work.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and
you’d drive through a building for any one of them.

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject,
  because loyalty scales and plot doesn’t have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you
  defend it past the point of reason.
• You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve,
  an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how
to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the
  rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that’s left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an
  administrative error.
• You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure.
  The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best
equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the
end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned,
  bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic,
  and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation,
  and you’ve never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

What Is ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ About?

In addition to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, Bad Boys: Ride or Die also stars Vanessa Hudgens as Kelly, Alexander Ludwig as Dorn, Eric Dane as McGrath, and even Ioan Gruffudd as Lockwood. Chris Bremen wrote the script for the film with Will Beall, and George Gallo also earned a writing credit for his work creating the characters. The official synopsis for Bad Boys 4, which holds a 68% rating from critics and a stunning 96% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows: “The world’s favorite Bad Boys are back with their iconic mix of edge-of-your seat action and outrageous comedy, but this time with a twist: Miami’s finest are now on the run.”

Check out Bad Boys: Ride or Die on Hulu in America or on Netflix globally and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Will Smith’s future projects.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die