NEW YORK, Oct 3 — Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld has revealed the set of the 1997 action comedy had to be evacuated "for about three hours” because Will Smith farted.

Smith and co-star Tommy Lee Jones were filming a scene where both were in a transforming car that travels at hyper speeds and flips over and the actors had to be "hermetically sealed” in the pod that was being used for the car, reported Variety.

"There are locks to prevent it from opening and falling,” said Sonnenfeld said on the Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa.

"I say, ‘Roll camera.’ And I hear Will Smith go, ‘Oh Jesus, so sorry. Tommy, so sorry. Baz, get the ladder.’ And you hear Tommy saying, ‘That’s fine, Will. No worries, Will. Don’t worry, Will.’ Anyway, I don’t know what’s gone on, right?

"So we race the ladder over. Yeah, Tommy reaches his leg out as the ladder is coming over, races down the stairs. And what happened was, Will Smith is a farter,” he added.

"And you really don’t want to be inside a very small hermetically sealed space with a Will Smith fart. You don’t even want to be sitting next to him at the Disney ranch.

"We evacuated the stage for about three hours. And that’s incredible. No, he’s, you know, a lovely guy. Just, he farts. Some do, some don’t.”

Flatulence or not, Men in Black went on to gross US$584 million (RM2.46 billion) worldwide to become the third-highest-grossing movie of 1997, and combined with Independence Day, the film cemented Smith's position as a global superstar.

Sonnenfeld would go on to helm two more sequels with Smith: 2002’s Men in Black II and 2012’s Men in Black 3, both of which failed to match up to the achievements of the original.