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‘Bad Boys’ Was Originally Written for Two ‘SNL’ Stars (Who Hated It)

‘That would’ve been a very different movie,’ Will Smith told Jimmy Fallon in 2024

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Bad Boys was initially scheduled to start shooting in February 1993. At that stage, the film was a Disney production and had undergone several alterations, including a name change from Bulletproof Hearts. Oh, and Will Smith and Martin Lawrence weren’t involved in any way, shape, or form. Instead, the movie was set to star Saturday Night Live cast members Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, if you can imagine that.

“[Don] Simpson and [Jerry] Bruckheimer, they wanted Dana, and then they added me into it afterward,” Lovitz told The A.V. Club in 2010. “But the script—oh, another George Gallo script–the script was awful. They rewrote it for three months, but Disney didn’t want to do the new script.” According to Lovitz, “They wanted to do the original one, and it ended up going to Columbia. And Barry Josephson—who is a friend and used to be my manager—he decided to make it with two Black actors, and that’s what happened.”

“But the script really wasn’t good,” Lovitz continued. “In an interview with Don, he said, ‘Well, the script was s–t.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s what we were saying.’ The funny thing is, I’ve become really good friends with Jerry Bruckheimer, and every time I see him I go, ‘Give me another chance!’ And he says, ‘No, you’ll turn it down!’ And I go, ‘But I said yes!’ But that stuff happens.” Lovitz went on to say, “Then you had Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and they were great in it. Oh, and Jerry said, ‘Well, you guys could have improvised,’ and I was like, ‘You never said that!’”

When the subject came up during a joint interview with Smith and Lawrence on The Tonight Show in 2024, Smith told Jimmy Fallon, “That would’ve been a very different movie.” Lawrence also revealed that when he first signed on, he wanted to star alongside Eddie Murphy. Obviously, he didn’t get his wish, but one of Murphy’s former co-stars did get offered Smith’s role at one point. In a 2013 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Arsenio Hall said he had actually turned down the Mike Lowrey part before Smith was thrown into the mix, which he admitted was a bad decision in retrospect.

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