Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in 2012′s Men in Black 3 (AP Photo/Columbia Pictures-Sony, Wilson Webb)

The men in black are returning to theaters — but their star secret agent has stepped down. A Hollywood Reporter interview with Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, who produced Men in Black and its two sequels, has confirmed that a franchise revival is moving forward without Will Smith. (Of course, if they zap the audience with a neuralyzer, they’ll never know he was there in the first place!)

“We’re in the middle of it. It’s very active,” Parkes said of the new Men in Black movie, which is intended to be the first part of a second trilogy. Asked whether Smith will be involved, Parkes told THR, “Most likely no.”

Based on a 1990 comic book series, the sci-fi comedy Men in Black — about two employees of a secret government agency (played by Smith and Tommy Lee Jones) that monitors extraterrestrial life on Earth — premiered in summer 1997 to huge success, grossing more than $250 million during its theatrical run. (Making it the second biggest hit of that year, after Titanic.) Smith and Jones returned for the critically maligned Men in Black II in 2002, which had a bigger opening weekend than the first movie but topped out at $190 million. Ten years later, the stars returned for the MiB3, though Jones played a much smaller role, as the plot mostly dealt with Smith time-traveling back to work with Jones’s younger self, played by Josh Brolin. The 2012 threequel made $179 million domestically — but ended up as the most lucrative installment of the franchise thanks to international grosses that combined to take it to over $600 million worldwide.