Men in Black is back, and though the fourth instalment in the franchise will be a definite departure from the original trilogy [1], we can't wait to get back into the MIB universe once again. Rather than the original alien-fighting agent duo of Will Smith [2] and Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black: International [3] reunites Thor: Ragnarok costars [4] Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as Agent H and Agent M, respectively, with Hemsworth playing a top agent in MIB's UK branch and Thompson playing a new MIB recruit assigned to the branch. In honour of this long-awaited flick, we present to you a few facts about the MIB franchise that we bet you've never heard before.
Little-Known Facts About Casting
- Director Barry Sonnenfeld originally didn't want to cast Tommy Lee Jones [6] as Agent K due to the actor's reputation for being a bit difficult to work with. Sonnenfeld once confessed that after seeing Jones give an interview, he told his wife, "Thank God, as long as I live I will never, ever have to work with that jerk." Funnily enough, the two ended up working very well together.
- Before Jones, Western icon Clint Eastwood [7] was reportedly offered the part of Agent K [8], though he turned it down.
- Chris O'Donnell was executive producer Steven Spielberg's top choice to play Agent J [9], but Sonnenfeld eventually persuaded him that Will Smith [10] would be a better fit for the role (and questionably dissuaded O'Donnell from accepting [11]).
- Friends alum David Schwimmer also turned down the role of Agent J [12] due to a film he was directing at the time with the cast of his Chicago theatre company.
Fun Cockroach Tidbits
- Coen Brothers alum John Turturro and Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell were both given the chance to play Edgar the Bug [13], a giant cockroach alien in disguise and the main antagonist of the first film, but both actors declined and the role eventually went to Vincent D'Onofrio.
- In order to get Edgar's stilted shuffle just right, D'Onofrio purchased two basketball knee braces from a sporting goods store [14] and practiced moving with his legs stuck in a slight bend and feet and ankles taped so that his ankles couldn't rotate.
- An animatronic version of Edgar the Bug was created for the final scenes of the original film, but the producers opted to use a computer generated bug instead, an investment that took up $4.5 million of the film's budget [15].
- According to The Humane Society, no cockroaches were harmed [16] in the making of the films. The yellow goo that can be seen when Agent J stomps on the bugs was actually created using packets of mustard, and the cockroaches were all accounted for at the end of every day on set.
Creepy Real-Life Influences
- MIB is an abbreviation first used in late ufologist John A. Keel's The Mothman Prophecies, a 1975 book-turned-film offering Keel's accounts of the large, winged creature called the Mothman that Keel allegedly spotted in West Virginia between 1966 and 1967 [17].
- Others credit They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers author (and close friend of Keel) Gray Barker for introducing the notion of the Men in Black to UFO folklore [18]. His own book about the Mothman, The Silver Bridge, preceded Keel's book by five years.
- Men in Black comic book creator Lowell Cunningham has said that he truly believes in the notion of men in black [19], whose job it is to keep people from discovering the truth about extraterrestrial life.