Good grief… We’re all familiar with tales of big movies that rumble intro production without a finished script, and while there are some that have gone on to be successful even after major tinkering (Apocalypse Now), the more script drafts that are required, the less likely the finished product will work well (Jonah Hex). Still, the production team behind **Men in Black III **are throwing caution to the wind and bringing on yet another writer. Though in this case, it’s more they’re bringing one back: David Koepp has been hired to do yet more polishing.
The long history of the third MIB outing starts with Tropic Thunder’s Etan Cohen, who finally cracked the concept and bashed out the shooting draft. David Koepp was brought in to spit-shine that original take as work began on the first half of the movie, which sees Will Smith's Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K at work in the present day.
But then, after a planned production shutdown that was attributed to several things, including tax breaks, weather and the need to do a little more work on that troublesome script, the delay was lengthened so that Catch Me If You Can’s Jeff Nathanson could do yet more work, this time on the second half, which will see Agent J travelling back to 1969 and track down a young agent K (with Josh Brolin taking over for Jones) to save the world.
According to Deadline, the film is set to gear back up on March 28 and Koepp is now hard at work on yet another new draft. It’s enough to give us a nervous rash just thinking about it, so we can’t imagine what state self-proclaimed neurotic Barry Sonnenfeld is in right now.
Still, according to Sony, the director has assembled the footage he’s shot so far, and everyone seemed to like it, so keep those fingers crossed that it’ll turn out as much fun as the first film. And that we won’t want to turn the Neuralyzer on ourselves once we’ve watched the thing…