Joe Carnahan Hates ‘The Danish Girl’ So Much His ‘Bad Boys 3’ Script Blew Up the Film’s Poster
Zack Sharf
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence recently wrapped production on the third entry in their “Bad Boys” movie franchise, entitled “Bad Boys For Life.” The project has been in development for several years, with “Smokin’ Aces” and “The Grey” director Joe Carnahan originally attached to write and direct the movie. Grey left the project over creative differences, but he recently revealed to Collider (via The Playlist) some of the details of his scrapped sequel. One random but critical throwaway gag written into the “Bad Boys 3” script was a dig at Oscar-winner “The Danish Girl.”
“I hated ‘The Danish Girl’ so much,” Carnahan said. “I said, ‘Could you make a poster for ‘The Danish Girl’ and blow it apart?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’ I fucking hated that movie with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. I think [the people who worked on ‘The Danish Girl’] are all really talented, I just hated that movie, me personally. I’m sure they hate my movies.”
“The Danish Girl,” directed by Tom Hooper of “The King’s Speech” fame, starred Eddie Redmayne as painter Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery. The movie divided critics and earned backlash for casting Redmayne in a transgender role, yet it nonetheless received four Academy Award nominations and won Alicia Vikander the prize for Best Supporting Actress.
Carnahan’s would-be “Danish Girl” criticism is similar to a visual gag in “Captain Marvel” in which the superhero crashes into a Blockbuster video store and blasts a stand-in poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “True Lies.” The James Cameron-directed action movie has not aged well since its 1994 release and is commonly viewed as one of the more sexist offerings of the 1990s. Many moviegoers took Captain Marvel blasting a “True Lies” poster as subversive criticism of Cameron’s movie.
As for other details of the original “Bad Boys 3” script, Carnahan said he was planning to do a $12 million action scene that got rejected. “I think they’re doing a portion of it,” the director said of the film. “I had a sequence where they’re on a Gunbus, which is a German motorcycle. They changed it, now it’s like a sidecar, not a good idea, whatever. [Laughs] It’s one of the greatest.” Carnahan went on to call his script “phenomenal” and said he does not hold hard feelings against star Will Smith for not moving forward with it.
“I love Will, he’s a great guy,” Carnahan said. “Listen, I always say this. Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, you find me a motherfucker in the modern era that’s walked away from movies with those guys and is still working in some capacity.”
“Bad Boys For Life” features a script written by Chris Bremner. Sony has already dated the movie for a January 17, 2020 release.
