After seventeen years away from our screens, Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett returned in spectacular fashion last January when Bad Boys For Life exploded into theaters. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s lead duo may have been almost two decades older, but they more than showed that they’ve still got it.
In fact, the third installment in the franchise managed to score both the best reviews and the biggest box office numbers that the Bad Boys had seen yet, landing a solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 77% and racing to a global haul of over $426 million. At the time, nobody could have predicted that a title released in the third week of the year would go on to become the highest-grossing hit of 2020 domestically, not to mention the second biggest earner of the year worldwide behind only Chinese blockbuster The Eight Hundred, which brought in over 99.9% of its $461 million tally from local theaters, but that’s exactly what happened.
Three movies in 25 years is hardly a prolific return for an action franchise, but almost as soon as Bad Boys For Life opened to a bumper $62 million, a fourth outing was announced to be in active development, while further reports have indicated that there could be much more to come from the aging detective lieutenants.
Bad Boys For Life has continued to shine long after it stopped playing on the big screen, too, dominating the home video charts when it first debuted on VOD in mid-May, and it’s finding an even bigger audience now that it’s available on streaming. The buddy cop sequel is currently one of the most-watched titles on Hulu, with the action genre proving hugely popular across all platforms as viewers chase the adrenaline rush that comes with the territory.
