Will Smith was a recent guest on Kevin Hart's Hart to Heart talk show, and the two comedic action stars touched on the starting point of Smith's turn as one of the biggest blockbuster actors of the late '90s.
Smith's Independence Day was released in 1996, which was followed by Men in Black, which hit theaters in 1997. However, Smtih revealed that he initially didn't want to make Men In Black.
"I didn't want to make Men In Black- that was the next year after Independence Day. So, I didn't want to make two alien movies back-to-back."
When Kevin Hart asked him how did Steven Spielberg convince him, Will Smith replied, "Steven Spielberg sent a helicopter for me. I was in New York [at the time]. The helicopter landed at his house...He flew me in, and he said the coldest sh**."
"He said, 'Tell me why you don't want to make my movie.'... And there was the dot, dot, dot on the end. If he would have continued, he would've said, 'Joker, you know I made Jaws. Or, you know I made E.T. I walked in his house and he had the Jaws poster, the Jurassic Park poster. He had everything, so I would know. "
It obviously all worked out for Will Smith, as Men In Black was the top-grossing movie of 1997, earning $250,690,539 million for Sony. The Lost World: Jurassic Park was the second-highest-grossing domestic film of '97, grossing $229,086,679 million for Universal Pictures.
While '97 was a good year for Will Smith, it was an even better year for Spielberg.
Men In Black was based on the 1990 Malibu Comics series by writer Lowell Cunningham and illustrator Sandy Carruthers. The comic inspired three live-action films starring Tommy Lee Jones and Smith, as well as a 2019 spinoff film that starred Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson.
Men In Black Official Synopsis: Men in Black follows the exploits of agents Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) and Jay (Will Smith), members of a top-secret organization established to monitor alien activity on Earth. The two MiB find themselves in the middle of the deadly plot by an intergalactic terrorist (Vincent D'Onofrio) who has arrived on Earth to assassinate two ambassadors from opposing galaxies.