The 'Boys' Are Backin Town

STILL BAD, IF A LITTLE OLDER, SMITH AND LAWRENCE FINALLY RETEAM

Way back in the spring of 1995 -- when Britney Spears was still in middle school and Julia Ormond was still the next big thing -- Sony Pictures scored a sleeper hit with the cop-buddy movie ''Bad Boys.'' Nobody expected much; budgeted at $20 million, it starred a pair of TV actors, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and was directed by a feature-film neophyte, Michael Bay. But when it grossed more than $140 million worldwide, Sony executives planned a sequel. And then they waited. For eight years.

The delay, according to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, came down to two factors: scheduling, and devising a satisfactory screenplay. (After toying with sending the characters to an exotic locale -- ''We had it in London, Paris, South Africa,'' Bruckheimer recalls -- they kept the characters in Miami.) Not that the script is anything more than a jumping-off point: The franchise relies heavily on riffing from its two stars. ''It's the same amount of improvising [as the first movie], if not more,'' Smith says. And, he adds, he enjoyed it enough to hatch a plan: ''Martin and I, we should never work with anyone else.'' Does this mean that Smith's up for Bad Boys III? ''I'd make it in a heartbeat,'' he says. Which means that it might well arrive sometime before 2011. (July 18)