Straight Outta Compton and The Fate of the Furious director, F. Gary Gray is currently in talks to take the helm of the upcoming Men in Black Spin-off.

Sony and Amblin have been looking to reinvent the franchise since the final instalment of the franchise was released in 2012. With Gray, they are looking to bring the same success the franchise had with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, although the pair are not expected to return.

The spin-off has already been written by Iron Man scribes Matt Holloway & Art Marcum and the studio greenlit the picture on their draft. Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are back as producers and Steven Spielberg will be executive producers. A release date of June 14, 2019, has already been set.

Sony have toyed with the idea of crossing the Men in Black universe with that of the Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill led 21 Jump Street, but that idea never got off the ground. The new venture looks to be going back to its original premise of a covert force policing the alien population hiding in plain sight, the premise of the comic book series by Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers.

Gray looks like the perfect candidate to take over the franchise since both Straight Outta Compton and The Fate of the Furious both achieved massive box office success. Compton taking over $200 million and The Fate of the Furious $1.163 billion. Proving his experience and muscle could be a good money spinner for the studio.

Gray has also been at the helm for Set If Off, The Negotiator, Law Abiding Citizen and The Italian Job.