Michael Bay bails on possibly cursed Will Smith flick Fast And Loose over creative differences

The Bad Boys pair reportedly fell out over whether to emphasize the Netflix movie's action elements (Bay) or its jokes (Smith).

By William Hughes  |  August 8, 2025 | 12:51am
Michael Bay and Will Smith promoting Bad Boys II in 2003, Photo: L. Cohen/WireImage
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Michael Bay bails on possibly cursed Will Smith flick Fast And Loose over creative differences
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It’s not a big mystery why Will Smith’s latest Netflix movie, Fast And Loose, has had some trouble getting off the ground over the last three years. First, potential director David Leitch backed away from the project in early 2022, deciding to pursue his project The Fall Guy instead. This turned out to be a pretty lucky decision for Leitch, since he made the choice just a week ahead of the 94th Academy Awards, during which Smith hopped up on stage and slapped the project straight into Netflix’s “Let’s sleep on this for a minute” pile. It took two years—and the success of Bad Boys: Ride Or Die—to get the streamer feeling enthusiastic again, now with Smith’s original Bad Boys director Michael Bay attached. Now, though, we have to ask: Is this thing genuinely cursed, or is it just the Will Smith of it all? Because THR reports that Bay has now dropped out of the film, citing “creative differences” with his star.

It’s worth noting that the premise for the film definitely sounds like a Will Smith Netflix movie—Bright! Still technically available to stream!—with the actor playing “a crime boss who loses his memory after an attack and gradually learns that he was leading a double life as a CIA agent.” It’s not clear how much room there even is in that idea for creative differences to crop up, but Bay and Smith apparently found them. (Although Bay has a producing credit on the later Bad Boys films, he last directed Smith in 2003’s Bad Boys II.) The script itself has been credited to Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, Chris Bremner (who worked on the last two Bad Boys movie), and Marvel guy Eric Pearson, from a script originally sold to Netflix by the Hoebers. (Who, by dint of writing Battleship, The Meg, RED, and more, were really out there penning Netflix-style movies before Netflix-style movies were even a thing.)

Deadline offers up at least a bit of speculation on where the split between Smith and Bay came from: The director reportedly wanted to amplify the movie’s action elements, while Smith wanted to play up its comedic aspects. Now, of course, nobody gets anything—at least until Netflix lures a third director to get this possibly cursed effort to jumpstart Smith’s stalled public rehabilitation off the ground.

 
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