Until recently you could only know them from Flemish and Dutch crime films, but Adil El Arbi (31) and Bilall Fallah (33) are the men behind from Thursday Bad Boys for Life. For the third part of the action series, they were in control of protagonists Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. “That was just as stressful,” laughs El Arbi.
“Will and Martin are our childhood heroes”, Fallah adds to his colleague. “Were we two lummels from Belgium really telling those guests how they should do their work?”
“But they genuinely wanted to know what we thought,” continues El Arbi. “They constantly pushed us to do our own thing. They were very professional in that. Good guests, haha.”
The new Bad boys is currently in the lead in the American box office and from Thursday also runs in the Netherlands. In conversation with NU.nl, directors Adil & Bilall, as they are always in the credits, are full of cheerful energy.
“It was a crazy adventure,” notes El Arbi over the past two years. “For the first time I have less tension in my body. It is nice to be back home with family and friends in Belgium.”
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The Flemish Adil El Arbi (left) and Bilall Fallah (right) in the director’s seats for the action film Bad Boys for Life. (Photo: Sony)
From Flanders to Hollywood
The rapids started in 2015 with Black, a raw and violent love drama set in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Thanks to a selection for the Toronto film festival, producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Bad boys, Pearl Harbor) to see the movie.
“One of the first meetings in Hollywood was with him,” Fallah remembers. “He asked what kind of film we would like to make, we said immediately Bad Boys 3. We both grew up with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. It turned out to be a director for it alone. But he eventually left because of creative differences with Will. “
After the Flemish-Dutch gangster film Patser Adil & Bilall were able to get started with a budget of 90 million dollars (81 million euros). “You have to maneuver within a certain context,” says El Arbi about the work for a large film studio. “We couldn’t always do what we wanted. For every three decisions we made, we won one and lost two.”
“Were we two lummels from Belgium really saying how they should do their work?”
Bilall Fallah
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Fallah gives a few examples of the adjustments they made. El Arbi: “There were several bad guys at first, we made one strong woman out of it. And we tried to make the scenario a little more realistic. Of course it remains a Bad boysmovie, but it didn’t have to be anything Fast & Furious turn into.”
“Originally there was something with radioactive bullets for example,” Fallah continues. “And a scene in which Will Smith crashes into something with his moped, flies through the air and then grabs something to get stuck. I just don’t believe that anymore.”
In the meantime, the opposite was sometimes given. “Sometimes we thought something was good enough, while Will wanted to get more out of it,” says Fallah. The director cites the comic scene with a sniffed accountant as an example. “Will came up with that idea two days before we were going to run the scene. He was constantly looking for improvements. Really crazy about how much energy that boy has. And that scene ended up in the beginning of the trailer.”
“We had much less to lose than the studio”
In recent years, studios increasingly seem to be putting relatively unknown directors on very expensive projects. From the new one Jurassic World-part to King Kong and various Marvel films. Fallah explains: “On the one hand, they are constantly on the lookout for talents with new ideas. But on the other hand, it is also simply cheaper. An experienced director who asks for millions immediately takes a big bite out of the budget.”
And perhaps in this way studios also hope for obedient filmmakers. “I think that’s true,” Fallah says. “In our case that would have been a bit of a disappointment, haha. Sometimes there was a heated conversation and they said we should be happy with the great opportunity we had with this film. We kind of waved those things away. We had much less to lose than they did. “
The fourth part of the Beverly Hills Copseries within reach. “Netflix is going to make it and Jerry wants to work with us again,” says El Arbi. “We’ve talked to Eddie Murphy about it a couple of times. That band is fine.”
The blockbusters therefore ogle, but in the meantime the Flemish directors have not completely pledged their hearts to Hollywood. El Arbi: “We also want to keep making smaller productions, in Belgium or the Netherlands. You can still make some more mistakes and try things. But we know Miami through and through, so we hope to come back there too. Maybe for Bad Boys 4“
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