Nearly 30 years after its release, Men in Black remains one of Will Smith’s best movies, though it took some convincing from Steven Spielberg for him to sign on. There’s a lot to enjoy from the Malibu Comics adaptation, from the dynamic between Smith’s Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K, to how the movie’s various aliens were realized with practical and CGI effects. What wasn’t so enjoyable during the making of Men in Black, however, was the time Smith let out a fart that was so bad, it resulted in the set being evacuated for three hours.

This gas of a story comes to us from Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, who stopped by Let’s Talk Off Camera to plug his new book, Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time, which is filled with stories from his film and TV career. During the episode, Sonnfeld recalled to host Kelly Ripa about the time he and the Men in Black crew were getting ready to shoot Smith and Jones (whom the director said “does not suffer fools”) in a device that functioned as a car turning into a “hyper car.” The actors had to get into this device via the kind of ladders you’d find at an airport tarmac, and then they were “hermetically sealed” in.

The actors being locked in was done for safety reasons so that they wouldn’t fall out of the device, but there was an unfortunate consequence to this. Sonnenfeld heard Will Smith apologizing to Tommy Lee Jones and asked for someone named Baz to get a ladder, and Jones was simply telling Smith not to worry about what had happened (as opposed to saying he didn’t sanction his buffoonery). The actors were removed from the device and Jones raced “down the stairs” to exit the scene. As Sonnenfeld explained:

While I’m not going to shame Will Smith for being a farmer, I also have to side with Tommy Lee Jones on this. If you’re an enclosed space like that and someone lets one rip, that’s just a brutal experience. Fortunately, it sounds like it didn’t take too long to get the actors free, but the tradeoff was production grinding to a screeching halt. As Barry Sonnenfeld put it:

This is perhaps the biggest piece of fart-related news in the entertainment industry since Whoopi Goldberg was accused of farting the most out of all The View hosts in 2023. As far as Will Smith goes, though, it sounds like this was just one regrettable incident, and his toots didn’t pose any more problems during the making of Men in Black. He and Jones went on to play J and K in two more Men in Black movies, which Barry Sonnenfeld also directed. In 2019, a spinoff called Men in Black: International was released, but that Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson-led flick failed to impress critically and commercially.

As of this writing, you’ll need to be on Sling TV if you’d like to stream the first three Men in Black movies. Will Smith was seen earlier this year in Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and he’s one of the producers attached to the next Karate Kid movie, which is set for a May release on the 2025 movies schedule.

1997’s Men In Black features what is arguably Will Smith’s best role of his career to date, but like many Hollywood stories, there was another big name actor who almost got the part in the action movie instead of him. That person was Chris O’Donnell, who at a time had a number of hit movies like Scent of a Woman, The Three Musketeers and as Robin in Batman Forever. As Men In Black hits its 25th anniversary, the movie’s director recalls “underpromising” the ‘90s classic to O'Donnell so that he could get Will Smith on board. 

Men In Black director Barry Sonnenfeld recently shared that Hollywood producers' first choice for the sci-fi comedy ahead of production was Chris O’Donnell for Agent J opposite Clint Eastwood as Tommy Lee Jones’ role of Agent K. However, Sonnenfield was dead set on Smith. Here’s how he steered O’Donnell away in his words while recently discussing the film with Insider:

While speaking about Men In Black a quarter of a century after its original release (on July 2, 1997), Barry Sonnenfield shared that Will Smith was his top choice for one of the movie’s leads because his wife thought he would be the right fit for the part. In order to give Smith a chance, he downplayed the movie to Chris O’Donnell. He continued to share the story behind Smith nabbing the role, saying,

Barry Sonnenfield also shared that he thinks O’Donnell – who more recently has become famous for his role in NCIS – is a “good actor.” However, once his wife gave him the idea to cast The Prince of Bel-Air star he had a one track mind about it. At the time of the casting, another Will Smith classic, Independence Day had yet to come out, which ended up becoming the top grossing movie of 1996, preceding the release of Men In Black the following year. Those producers who preferred O’Donnell had no idea that Smith was about to become the biggest Hollywood star, but they surely must have been happy to see it happen. 

When sharing the Men In Black story, Barry Sonnenfield shared that it is his belief that “you always want to underpromise and overdeliver.” Alongside Men In Black, the filmmaker is behind the Addams Family movies, Wild Wild West (also with Will Smith) and most recently has directed multiple A Series of Unfortunate Events and Schmigadoon! episodes. 

Men In Black became the highest grossing movie of 1997, continuing a two-year blockbuster streak for Will Smith at the time. Twenty-five years later, Men In Black is still a classic and very much holds up among ‘90s films and there’s a lot of love for the sequels too. Happy 25th to Men in Black! 

Making good movies is hard. If there’s one thing that more than a hundred years of Hollywood filmmaking have shown it’s that making a good movie can be tough, but in the history of bad movies, there are a few that still stand out as being particularly terrible. 1999’s Wild Wild West is one of them, and director Barry Sonnenfeld still thinks about how the movie went so wrong. He still regrets one scene where he put Will Smith in drag.

There are several elements of the Wild Wild West movie that don’t work, but Barry Sonnenfeld recently told Mel Magazine that the part of the movie he regrets over all others is the scene where Will Smith becomes a belly dancer in order to seduce and distract Kenneth Branagh’s Dr. Loveless. Sonnenfeld thinks that, up until that scene, the movie is actually working reasonably well, but then the wheels come off the bus. He explains... 

The scene basically comes across like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and that’s not inherently a bad thing, but as Barry Sonnenfeld says here, the scene is just out of place in this movie. None of it makes any sense.  

One may then wonder if Barry Sonnenfeld, the movie’s director and one of its producers, didn’t like the scene, why is it there? Sonnenfeld says Jon Peters, the movie’s other producer, loved the scene and insisted that it remain in the movie. This isn’t the first time that Jon Peters has been at the center of controversy on this film. Kevin Smith has told a very famous story about his time working on an ill-fated Superman reboot, where Peters insisted a giant spider be involved. After that movie fell apart, a giant spider appears in Wild Wild West another Peters project. 

Jon Peters has become a somewhat infamous producer over the years, so much so that Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie, Licorice Pizza, actually includes Bradley Cooper in the role of Peters himself, in what is, one hopes, a satirized version of the hairdresser turned Hollywood producer. .

Whether a movie like Wild Wild West, based on a television series that most of the audience likely didn’t even know, was ever going to work is an open questions, but it’s difficult to argue that the movie we got was one of the biggest flops in recent memory. Not including Will Smith as a belly dancer certainly would have helped, however. 

Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty turns 25 this week, having been first released in October 1995, and while there is a great deal to appreciate about the film in retrospect, there’s no arguing the highlight that is John Travolta’s turn as gangster-turned-producer Chili Palmer. Arriving in the wake of Pulp Fiction, the performance confirmed the actor’s reawakened star power, and he brought the character to life with the perfect mix of cool and dangerous. His face is now what one imagines when reading Elmore Leonard’s original novel – which is pretty funny when you consider that it definitely wasn’t Travolta who was in the minds of Sonnenfeld and screenwriter Scott Frank when the movie was originally coming together.

Had things gone differently in the making of Get Shorty, Danny DeVito would have been the actor playing Chili Palmer, having been involved with the production from the very start. Barry Sonnenfeld was first inspired to make the crime comedy because he read the book on a cruise and immediately imagined DeVito as the protagonist, and that in turn led the actor/producer to personally buy the film rights. So when Scott Frank started to pen the script for the adaptation, it was with the Batman Returns/Junior star in mind as the lead.

In celebration of Get Shorty’s big 2020 anniversary, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Frank earlier this year, our conversation reflecting on the entirety of the experience making the film, and part of our conversation was dedicated to the evolution of Chili Palmer. Starting at the start, I asked if the screenwriter had specifically written the role with the intention that Danny DeVito would play it, and his answer was absolute:

Sound like a certain movie character? That’s the kind of fortitude needed for a shylock who arrives in Los Angeles and manages to become involved with the development of two feature films within a week. A person pulling something like that off realistically requires a special kind of energy, and Scott Frank took that from his impression of Danny DeVito and put it on the page in the form of Chili Palmer.

Unfortunately, that version of Get Shorty never came to be as a result of the film’s extensive time in development – the result of a number of factors, including the industry’s lack of confidence in Elmore Leonard adaptations at the time (something that seems pretty funny when you consider the amazing works that has been made since then, including Jackie Brown, Out Of Sight, and the television series Justified). Danny DeVito became unavailable to play Chili because of his commitments to star in and direct the movie Matilda, so he took on the smaller role of Martin Weird instead.

As revealed in Barry Sonnenfeld’s autobiography “Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker,” the director ended up meeting with a number of stars as possible replacements, including Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, and it was Stacey Sher, a producer at Danny DeVito’s Jersey Films and an Executive Producer on Pulp Fiction, that suggested John Travolta. The star actually passed on Get Shorty at first, and ultimately had to be convinced to say yes by Quentin Tarantino – but the funny addendum to the story is that the part of Chili Palmer didn’t change much at all when the role traded hands.

Keeping their respective careers in mind, it’s strange to think that Danny DeVito and John Travolta could be considered for what is basically the exact same part, but that was the situation as Scott Frank explained it to me during our interview. According to the screenwriter, there wasn’t any kind of John Travolta-centric redraft when he came onboard, and noted only one “major” change that was made to fit the star:

And it should go without saying that the addition was an excellent one. The story of a gangster getting into the movie industry is compelling all by itself, but one of the reasons why the audience connects with Chili so well is because his decision to make a career choice is driven by personal passion (in addition to wanting to rid his life of asshats like Dennis Farina’s Ray "Bones" Barboni).

So next time you watch Get Shorty (and, really, what better way is there to celebrate the anniversary?) perhaps take a moment to envision what it would be like to see Danny DeVito as Chili Palmer, as it may give you a whole new perspective of the film.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stories from my in-depth interview with Scott Frank about the making of one of the best crime comedies of all time, so stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more!

To this day, Big is still one of the most popular films of the ‘80s and is considered to be one of Tom Hanks’ signature films. The classic comedy paired Hanks with the late Penny Marshall, who helmed the film. Based on the final product, one could assume that Hanks and Marshall were able to work together in harmony but, according to Barry Sonnenfeld, that wasn’t completely the case.

Barry Sonnenfeld stopped by our ReelBlend podcast and shared a number of stories about projects like Men in Black, Get Shorty and A Series of Unfortunate Events. He also talked about working alongside Tom Hanks as the cinematographer on Big, and he had an interesting story to share about Hanks and director Penny Marshall. You can listen to the entire discussion below:

According to Barry Sonnenfeld, Tom Hanks was relatively patient with Penny Marshall, who had a reputation for having a tough demeanor. Aside from asking Hanks to do multiple takes on certain scenes (for unclear reasons), she would also receive massages on set. At one point, Sonnenfeld even served as a go-between for the two:

Well, you have to admit those are certainly unusual circumstances for a film set. In many cases, a filmmaker likes to work directly with their actors. But then again, Penny Marshall was no typical filmmaker.

The relationship between actor and director can vary based on the people and the project their involved in. For instance, Underwater’s William Eubank forged a great relationship with his lead Kristen Stewart. The Peanut Butter Falcon’s Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz also enjoyed working with Shia LaBeouf.

Conversely, George Clooney didn’t have the best working relationship with director David O. Russell while the two were making Three Kings.

Tom Hanks and Penny Marshall may not have had the easiest relationship, but the success of Big proved the dynamic was effect. Plus, Hanks couldn’t have had too bad a time working with Marshall, since he would later reunite with her for 1992’s A League of Their Own.

Keep checking CinemBlend and listening to the ReelBlend podcast for more news from the world of movies and TV.

While most people probably think of 1994’s Forrest Gump chiefly as one of Tom Hanks’ most popular movies, let’s not forget it’s among the biggest credits on director Robert Zemeckis’ resume. However, before Zemeckis came aboard Forrest Gump, the plan was for The Addams Family’s Barry Sonnenfeld to helm the feature about an Alabaman man who was got caught up in many notable mid-late 20th century historical events.

Barry Sonnenfeld ultimately decided to pass on directing Forrest Gump, but during the time he was attached, he suggested to Tom Hanks that the eponymous character be changed in a key way compared to how he’s depicted in the original source material: having him be a skilled runner. As Sonnenfeld recalled during his recent appearance on the ReelBlend podcast:

The original Forrest Gump novel, written by Winston Groom, was published in 1986, and the film rights were snagged several years later by Paramount Pictures. However, as with any cinematic adaptation, creative liberties were taken, including multiple chapters from the book being skipped over, new life events for the main character and, straight from Barry Sonnenfeld, making Tom Hanks’ Forrest into a runner.

That proved to be a good call, as Forrest Gump’s running proved to be one of the most memorable aspects of the movie, from outrunning those bullies in his school years to racing as a college football player to spending three years as a cross-country marathoner. And needles to say that Tom Hanks clearly didn’t think Forrest Gump was too similar to 1988’s Big since he accepted the role and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

As for why Barry Sonnenfeld passed on the opportunity to direct Forrest Gump, it’s because he was offered Addams Family Values at the same time, and when push came to shove, Sonnenfeld decided he’d rather stick with the creepy, kooky and altogether ooky clan. The filmmaker explained:

Maybe there’s an alternate reality where Barry Sonnenfeld ended up scoring that producer credit and was able to contribute to Forrest Gump further. Still, in our reality, he left an important impact on that movie, and deciding to helm Addams Family Values also proved to be a wise decision, as like its predecessor, the sequel was met with a solid amount of positive reception. Sonnenfeld went on to direct the original Men in Black trilogy and Wild Wild West, among other things.

Feel free to listen to ReelBlend’s full interview with Barry Sonnenfeld below.

Made off a $55 million budget, Forrest Gump collected over $678 million worldwide during its theatrical run, and in addition to Tom Hanks bringing home an Oscar that year, the movie won five other Academy Awards and scored seven other nominations. There was also talk about giving Forrest Gump a sequel in the 2000s, but such a project never moved forward.

Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for all the biggest movie news, and don’t forget to look through our comprehensive guide detailing all the recently delayed movies.

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Hollywood is filled with storytellers. And the longer that one stays in the Hollywood system, the more (crazy) stories they tend to amass. Such is the case with Barry Sonnenfeld, who was a colorful character long before he started making movies with Joel and Ethan Coen, or taking audiences into extraterrestrial territories with the Men In Black franchise.

Barry Sonnenfeld recently put a lot of his stories into a book titled “Barry Sonnenfeld. Call Your Mother.” The story behind that title, alone, is worth picking up the book.

But on this bonus episode of ReelBlend, we spotlight why Sonnenfeld is one of the most interesting and creative storytellers, and it’s largely due to the way he approaches a yarn. He’s a born spinner, and his stories are unpredictable and hilarious. He talks to the ReelBlend boys about his start in the adult film industry, his early collaborations with the Coen Brothers on movies like Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, and the way he handles the Hollywood studio system. Including fighting for the casting of Josh Brolin over Mark Wahlberg in the Men in Black series.

Barry Sonnenfeld was nice enough to give us a lot of his time, and his anecdotes are too valuable to cut. So instead of fitting him into a regular-sized episode, we broke him out to his own bonus episode. We know you guys love movies, and we’re confident you will love this candid conversation with longtime film director Barry Sonnenfeld.

Want a copy of Barry Sonnenfeld’s excellent book? It’s available on Amazon as we speak.

We all have to get our start somewhere. For Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, that start included being a cinematographer on porno movies, but he nonetheless learned some key things about moviemaking during his time working on X-rated material, particularly pertaining to one of the five basic senses.

While recently chatting about his new memoir, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker, Barry Sonnenfeld mentioned how years before he penned the book, for his own “edification,” he wrote a chapter about the nine porno movies he worked on in just nine days right after graduating film school. When asked what the porn industry taught him that he could apply to mainstream filmmaking, Sonnenfeld responded:

Uh, yeah, I can imagine, what with all the fluids involved. Still, even if Smell-O-Vision porno was off the table, I imagine such a gimmick for regular movies could still end up being problematic at times. It’s one thing for the visuals of a movie to be enhanced through various means, but if you throw in certain smells that aren’t pleasant as a way to further immerse audiences into the environment of the fictional story, that could be a turnoff.

Continuing in his interview with THR, Barry Sonnenfeld explained that the reason he jumped into pornos right after film school is that he was a sought-after cinematographers, and he felt if he bought a used 16 mm camera, he could call himself a cameraman without feeling like a “dilettante.” So he and one of his classmates bought such a camera together and rented it out to shoot those nine pornos, which ended up paying for approximately 60% of the entire cost of the camera.

In addition to walking away with thoughts on Smell-O-Vision, Barry Sonnenfeld also imparted some advice during his time in the porn industry. The filmmaker recalled:

Not long after working in adult entertainment, Barry Sonnenfeld was hired as the director of photography for the 1982 documentary In Our Water. After that, he was hired onto The Coen Brothers’ 1984 movie Blood Simple in the same position, and he went on to be the cinematographer for movies like Raising Arizona, Big and When Harry Met Sally.

Barry Sonnenfeld made his directorial debut with 1991’s The Addams Family, and along with returning for the sequel, Addams Family Values, his other notable directing credits include the first three Men in Black movies and Get Shorty. The last movie he helmed with 2016’s Nine Lives, which was met with mostly negative reception. Sonnenfeld opted out of shooting last year’s Men in Black: International because he doesn’t get along with the franchise’s producers.

Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for all the biggest updates in movie news, and keep track of the movies that have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic with our comprehensive guide.

Anyone who takes just a couple of minutes to think about what goes into making a major motion picture will likely come to the conclusion that it's a pretty hard gig, especially for the crew. Generally, those behind the camera get very little to none of the glory, so you have all the long nights without much of the getting into swanky restaurants because of your name. Well, for director Barry Sonnenfeld, who worked as the cinematographer for the 1988 Tom Hanks film Big, the gig was so tough he considered wearing adult diapers to work.

Usually, adult diapers are not an option most of us would consider for a normal workday, right? Even those of us with very high pressure jobs and little time to spare during our working hours are willing and able to stop the money train for up to 20 minutes (you do what you gotta do) to make sure the pipes are empty so you're not squirming all day. Unfortunately, as Barry Sonnenfeld details in his new memoir Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother (via Vulture), things were a wee bit tense (See what I did there?) between himself and director Penny Marshall, to the point that he didn't want to leave set for any reason.

Wooooo, booooooy! Barry must have had it ROUGH on the set of Big, amiright? Never, in the history of my life (which is semi-long at this point), have I considered wearing a diaper so that I don't have to stop working. I have a few questions about Sonnenfeld's thought process though. I get that he didn't want anyone to leave set, but, did he think at all about the fact that telling everyone to wear diapers (a) is probably a violation of some very good workplace laws and (b) would lead to a lot of already sweating guys smelling like pee all day...on top of the sweat?

Also, this wouldn't have just been an unreasonable edict for the rest of the crew, Barry Sonnenfeld was planning to wear a diaper, too. I've never taken care of a baby, but I hear that one inherent issue is that the diaper said baby begins the day with is not the same diaper with which that kid ends the day. Sonnenfeld, and everyone else wearing diapers (I can't believe I write for an entertainment website and have typed the word "diaper" this many times) would eventually have to step away from set to...change themselves. Again, no diaper experience here, but I'm pretty sure you can't do that while also adding track to a dolly, Barry!

You know what? Good on Barry Sonnenfeld for testing out his idea first, and using himself as the guinea pig. I have to say, I don't think a lot of leaders would do that. They'd just make their assistant try it out, probably in their car on the way to work, and be sorely disappointed by the results later, and maybe even blame the assistant for not peeing correctly or something. I don't know. I hear being a Hollywood assistant is tough.

Big is streaming on several services, so now's a good time to revisit it and imagine Tom Hanks having to dodge crew members carrying around full pee diapers on set for weeks on end. In the meantime, be sure to check out our new movie release guide, which will be updated with premiere delays as soon as the information becomes available.

One of the most startling revelations of the Sony hackings was the fact that the studio were considering a potential Men In Black and 21 Jump Street crossover. After initially being left a little perplexed by how the franchises would link up, fans soon realized that there were just way too many talented folks involved for it not to work. But the cold harsh realities of filmmaking are set to block either a Men In Black/21 Jump Street crossover or a fourth Men In Black film from ever happening. That's according to director Barry Sonnenfeld, who insists that there are just too many "expensive players" involved with Men In Black for a fourth film to work and be profitable.

Barry Sonnenfeld, who has directed all three of the Men In Black films, believes that because of the long list of producers and the money Will Smith would expect to make, too many people need to get paid before a new installment can go ahead. Sonnenfeld made this admission to Digital Spy, before saying that the only way he can see the franchise progressing is with new agents. As he put it:

But while Barry Sonnenfeld was a little downbeat about the chances of a fourth Men In Black film happening with the original team involved, he did insist that there was plenty of room in this universe for further efforts. In fact, Sonnenfeld even went as far as to insist that he hopes the franchise does progress without him, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The director declared:

Talk about taking one for the team. This isn't the first time that we've heard rumors about just how many people have their fingers in the Men In Black pie, and how the congestion surrounding the franchise is the reason why the potential crossover with 21 Jump Street hasn't materialized. Back in August 2016, Jonah Hill downplayed the chances of MIB 23 ever actually happening, as he insisted to the Toronto Sun that it was "impossible" to make a deal between the two franchises because of "all the Men In Black stuff."

There's still a little bit of hope out there for the film, though, because not only was its title confirmed as MIB 23, and that the crossover would replace a 23 Jump Street film, but as recently as December 2016, it was announced that Rodney Rothman had written a script, and that James Bobin was still attached to direct, too. But don't expect Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones to actually star opposite Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in the potential film.

Have you ever imagined Kevin Spacey as a cat? Well if your mind has ever wandered off into this unique scenario, then today is your lucky day. That’s because the Oscar-winning actor has signed up to portray a man who finds himself trapped in the body of a feline for Barry Sonnenfeld’s high-concept comedy, Nine Lives.

According to The Wrap, Kevin Spacey has signed up to star in Nine Lives, which revolves around a workaholic businessman, who, after being involved in a terrible accident, finds himself trapped inside the body of a family cat. Then, we can only assume that madness ensues.The project comes from a script written by Daniel Antoniazzi and Ben Shiffrin, and filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld has described Nine Lives as a "funny, emotional, commercial comedy." And while that might a little be too sickly sweet for some moviegoers, Kevin Spacey’s presence is sure to add some edge to the project.

How could it not? Kevin Spacey’s unique cinematic personality has seen him effortlessly add an effervescent menace as well as intrigue to every character he has ever played - be it John Williamson in Glengarry Glen Ross, John Doe in Seven, Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects, Lester Burnham in American Beauty or Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. Heck, even roles when he has only used his voice, Gerty in Moon and Hopper in A Bug’s Life, have teamed with power.

Those of you who are struggling to picture Kevin Spacey as a cat in Nine Lives should check out the clip below. That’s because Kevin Spacey previously portrayed a feline for a Jimmy Kimmel Live! YouTube film titled Ameowadeus. But rather than just being a run-of-the-mill cat, Spacey’s feline was also able to play the piano. Plus, another reason to watch it is that it’s a delightfully unique homage of Amadeus, while it also stars the precocious talents of Christoph Waltz, Gary Oldman, Mandy Patinkin and Sir Ben Kingsley. Enjoy.

Nine Lives is the latest comedy that Kevin Spacey has signed up to, and if his recent comedic turns are anything to go by it should be pretty successful. I mean, Horrible Bosses and Horrible Bosses 2, while far from great, were both passable and enjoyable, and he enhanced them both with his presence. Meanwhile, Nine Lives will also profit from the fact that it has Barry Sonnenfeld at the helm. Yes, his last two outings as a director, Men In Black 3 and RV, were pretty run of the mill, but the fact that he has overseen Men In Black, Get Shorty and The Addams Family proves that he is capable of creating a mainstream comedy with a quirky aesthetic. Fingers crossed it will be shot in 2015 ahead of a release in 2016.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld didn't exactly have a huge hit with Men in Black 3, but with more than half a billion dollars in global grosses and surprisingly warm reviews, it's safe to say he's escaped with his life, which didn't seem so certain back when the movie was trapped in production limbo and endless script rewrites. With that film out of the way and no apparent plans for another one (though, god knows, it's not out of the question), Sonnenfeld is free to move on to something original-- or, well, something that hasn't yet been turned into a film, at least.

He had teased before that he was working on a film based on a comic book from the 60s, and Vulture has figured out which one: The Metal Men. Like any good bit of arcana from the past, the Metal Men have their own fan site where you can catch up on the characters, who are robots created created by the genius Doc Magnus. Each of them is made of a certain element and carries the qualities of each, in a way that would probably make your high school chemistry teacher lose her mind-- Gold is the most pliant member of the group and also the leader, Platinum is the flashy token girl, Lead is the reliable but dim-witted sidekick, Iron is the muscle, Mercury is the hothead, and Tin is the insecure one with a stutter. The 60s were a glorious time, you guys.

The source material sounds unendingly goofy, but don't count out Sonnenfeld, who didn't just make magic with the original Men in Black, but also managed to adapt The Addams Family into a really rewarding movie in the early 90s. Of course, he also adapted another 60s property-- the TV show Wild Wild West-- into a disastrous film, but you can't win them all.

Time travel is a popular device in science-fiction, but it’s also a very tricky one to portray correctly. With so much science and so many rules at play, including Chaos Theory and parallel universes, it’s a hard concept to get your mind around. So when director Barry Sonnenfeld was making Men in Black III there was only one real place for him to look: Back To The Future.

At a recent press event in Los Angeles I had the chance to sit down with the filmmaker one-on-one to discuss his new film. Watch the video below to hear not only about how Back To The Future influenced the movie, but also how 3D came into the picture and how he got Michael Stuhlbarg to talk as fast as he does. Check it out!

Men In Black III stars Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma Thompson and Alice Eve. To see more from the film, head over to our Blend Film Database.

If you're aware at all of the existence of Men in Black III, you're probably heard of just how much effort it took that movie to get made. Finishing out a trilogy 15 years after the first film came out is always tricky, but that goes double when you go into production without a finished script, then go on hiatus to finish the script, only to have the budget balloon even further because of Will Smith's alleged star demands. The movie is reportedly finished and set for its May 25 release this year, and maybe now that they're out from the cloud of the actual production, director Barry Sonnenfeld and makeup designer Rick Baker are willing to speak out about how crazy the whole experience was.

Speaking in the print edition of Empire (via The Playlist), Sonnenfeld hedged his bets and admitted they started without a finished script, but allowed for the possibility that it might turn out to be a genius move:

Baker wasn't afraid to be even more blunt:

You can imagine an industry veteran like Baker, who has created makeup and creature effects for American Werewolf in London, Batman Forever and dozens of other productions, standing in horror watching the three-ring circus that was apparently the Men in Black III production. Sonnenfeld, as the director, has to take a little more responsibility-- though apparently in the Empire article he also credited Will Smith himself with the idea for the loopy time-travel plot of MiB III, so maybe Sonnenfeld has a lot less power than you think.

With so many people focused on the potential pitfalls of the big-budget John Carter, opening next week, I really wonder why no one has turned their attention to Men in Black III, which seems more ludicrously expensive and bound for disaster-- maybe it's too easy a target? I"ll be holding out hope that it's good, if only to validate Josh Brolin's spot-on Tommy Lee Jones impression, as seen as the end of this trailer. But with Sonnenfeld and Baker even admitting that they might not have made it that well, how are the rest of us supposed to hold out hope?

It's kind of hard to get really excited for Men in Black III. In addition to the fact that Men in Black II was a pretty lousy movie, the production on the third installment was rife with problems. What I mean by that was that the entire production was brought to a grinding halt and put on hiatus when they discovered that the script didn't work and they had to bring in new writers to right the ship. That said, the movie does have an impressive cast lined up (in addition to the returning Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the film also stars Josh Brolin, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve, Bill Hader, Jemaine, Clment and Michael Stuhlbarg) and has now introduced two new pretty cool posters.

Check out the new artwork below and head over to Coming Soon to see them full size.

While the images are largely made up of the "MIB3" symbol, some of you more eagle-eyed readers may notice that the bottom of the poster has a URL that reads "TheMenInBlackSuitsAreReal.com." Going to that site will redirect you to a viral Facebook page started by a user named "BugEyes126" (possibly a reference to the Bug in the first Men In Black movie). We can probably expect that this will be a hot source for news and updates about the upcoming film, so be sure to head back every now and again for more info about Men in Black III. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the sequel is scheduled to hit theaters on May 25, 2012.

Much as I am genuinely looking forward to seeing Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens this summer, I now recognize that it is part of an insidious trend that absolutely must be stopped. As if the entire movie industry has suddenly become a playroom full of five-year-olds bashing their favorite action figures against each other, we're being buried under a pile of movies that assume "Awesome Thing A + Awesome Thing B = Awesomest Thing"-- except that the math almost never works that way. Next up on the docket: dinosaurs vs. aliens, specifically the movie Dominion: Dinosaurs Versus Aliens, coming at us from Men In Black III director Barry Sonnenfeld.

Yes, once he's done plowing through the troubled third film in a series no one particularly wanted to see continued, Sonnenfeld will be working with Liquid Comics and producer Arnold Rifkin on a story that will be developed as a graphic novel and screenplay by comics artist Grant Morrison. He told Deadline, "Growing up, my fascination was all things dinosaur, and as an adult, I've had some success making films about aliens, so this is a dream come true." Of course, Steven Spielberg could have said the same thing around the time he made Jurassic Park, but he wasn't working in a time when genre mash-ups were the inexplicable new movie craze.

The plotline is pretty evident from the title: aliens invade the earth, dinosaurs have to muster their minuscule smarts and strike back, etc. etc. There's no guarantee it couldn't be good, of course, just as I won't write off Cowboys & Aliens based on a similarly goofy premise. But really, is this something we need? I hate complaining about original ideas, no matter how bizarre, but at this point these mash-ups don't even feel that original anymore.

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If a character has been around so long that everyone has forgotten about him, can he become original again? That might be the gambit that Columbia Pictures is going for, picking up a spec by Barry Sonnenfeld and BenDavid Grabinski that re-imagines boy genius Tom Swift.

Tom Who? Yeah, exactly-- the character was the star of a series of paperbacks that kicked off nearly a century ago, and while he has reappeared in various book incarnations over the decades, his popularity hasn't been as lasting as that of his contemporaries like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Then again, the one guarantee toward everlasting fame-- the movie deal-- has never happened for ol' Tom, until now. Variety writes that, if Columbia's planned pic gets made, it will have bested a 1968 version that Gene Kelly intended to direct, as well as a failed 70s effort.

Barry Sonnenfeld > Gene Kelly? Only in this strange world, apparently. Swift, who was apparently the original Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, inventing things like photo telephones and houses on wheels, actually sounds like a pretty appealing character. And hey, at least now they're cannibalizing someone else's childhood for movie ideas, rather than constantly taking things from the 80s. It's sad that that's the silver lining here, but there ya go.