David Koepp Now Rewriting 'Men In Black III'

The production schedule for Men in Black III has been a strange thing. A lot of footage was shot for the film last year, then a built-in production break kicked in at Christmas. Originally Sony was going to get the movie back into gear last month, but creative problems pushed the new resume date back to March 28. Jeff Nathanson was hammering out issues with the script along with director Barry Sonnenfeld and others. Now David Koepp (Spider-Man, War of the Worlds, Indy IV) has been brought in to finish the job.

Deadline reports the news. Specifically, what David Koepp is working on is the time-travel portion of the story that is set in 1969, when Will Smith's Agent J encounters a young version of Tommy Lee Jones' character Agent K, played by Josh Brolin. There was a point last year when it sounded like there would be some pretty jokey stuff in that segment — encounters with era-appropriate celebs like Yoko Ono and so forth.

But this part of the film has proved to be problematic, for some reason, and now that much extra time and a new writer are being devoted to the '69 segments, I wonder how different the final thing might be from what was rumored last year. We still don't know a lot about the movie overall. Emma Thompson plays the new head of the MiB organization; Alice Eve is the 1969 version of the same character, and Sharlto Copley, Alec Baldwin, Jemaine Clement all have roles. Beyond that, Sony has done a good job of keeping this one under wraps.

The 3D film is scheduled for May 25, 2012 and Sony insists that everything is fine and it will meet that date.