Belgian-born filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have a new hit on their hands: Bad Boys for Life – starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence – has already grossed $369 million worldwide.
Working with Smith as both star and co-producer, El Arbi and Fallah have kept the charm of the classic 90s buddy-cop franchise, blending old stars and new ones with appearances by Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, and even DJ Khaled.
After the success of Bad Boys for Life, the pair are in talks for positions on the upcoming Marvel Studios projects, as well as the possibility of a Beverly Hills Cop 4.
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah Grew Up with Hollywood Blockbusters
Growing up in Antwerp, Belgium to Moroccan immigrants, El Arbi frequently felt isolated. He found himself drawn more and more to television and movies. “I was not very sociable,” he recalls. “I would only go home and watch movies. Television was my best friend.” He loved big, blockbuster Hollywood films.
Behind-the-scenes footage of Jurassic Park introduced him to his dream of directing them. “It was the first time I would see the behind the scenes footage, and this guy with the hat and the beard and the glasses seemed to be making all the movies,” he explains. “I thought, I want to have his job.”
In film school, El Arbi connected with Bilall Fallah, who had also grown up near Antwerp and felt similarly stuck between cultures. As a Moroccan in bilingual Brussels, Fallah says, “it was really difficult to find myself in the beginning.”
“There was no public figure of any color,” El Arbi recalls. “No actors, no politicians. So you felt isolated. That’s why we connected right away, because we had the same background, the same struggles.”
Finding Their Way in the Film Industry
Bonded by their shared experiences, the pair soon became inseparable – so much so, that they eventually dropped out of film school together. Feeling like outsiders in the European industry, the pair sought a more American approach. “In our school, they were more European oriented,” observes Fallah. “We had to watch Godard and all those geniuses, but that’s not the cinema we wanted to make. We learned a lot from it, but we wanted to make big Hollywood movies.”
The directing duo’s first big break came in 2015 with the Belgian film, Black. It won various awards at the Black Film Festival in Montreal, the Film Festival Oostende, the Hamburg Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah Move from Art Films to Hollywood
With this breakthrough, El Arbi and Bilall caught the attention of Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, and Sony Pictures. “We’re just two punks from Belgium who don’t know anything, basically,” El Arbi laughs. “Then now, all of a sudden, we’re going to direct those two legends.”
“They were almost our big brothers,” Fallah adds. “They were also super humbling, in that they respected our vision and actually pushed us to go all the way for what we wanted to do.”
The pair remark that “to have Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and Sony say, hey, let’s give this big-ass franchise to two Moroccans and Muslims, that is something you cannot forget. They didn’t care. They just thought, let’s give them a chance.”
This chance paid off in full. Bad Boys for Life boasts a 76% Fresh critic’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a whopping 96% audience score. The film is still playing in some local theatres and should soon be coming to streaming services.
