Most of the recent news about Men In Black III has been distinctly dodgy, with reports in just the last couple of days about studio clashes, shifting shooting schedules and script rewrites by Catch Me If You Can’s Jeff Nathanson. So everyone involved is probably relieved that the latest word is some casting info, with Alice Eve signing on.
Last seen in She’s Out of My League and a small role in Sex and the City 2, Eve is on to play Olivia, hired by the MIB agency in 1969 as a secretary. Despite jealous claims that she got the job because of her looks, Agent Oh proves to be a smart cookie, and, in the present day, she’s played by Emma Thompson and running the joint. We’re assuming here that MIB boss Zed, who in the first two movies was played by Rip Torn, may only be a cameo this time around.
The movie starts in the present day, and then sees Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) time-travelling back to the 1960s where J will team up with a younger version of K, played by Josh Brolin to – as usual – save the planet.
Despite the apparent script problems, director Barry Sonnenfeld has cobbled together an early version of the film’s first act (the modern-day scenes, which were filmed before Christmas) and convinced Sony to let him take some downtime to tweak the period sections with Nathanson and original scribe Etan Cohen. Hopefully it’ll make for a better film, with the 3D release still set for May 23 next year.