Ice Cube has revealed he submitted two scripts for the fourth film in his stoner comedy franchise Friday, but that both were rejected by the studio.
Cube joined N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN as part of a live taping of Drink Champs during LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells weekend in August, and criticized Warner Brothers for not supporting the culture.
“I’m trying to get it out of Warner Brothers, they don’t believe in the culture man,” Cube said around the 29-minute mark, adding that the studio retains distribution rights for any sequels moving forward. “I had two scripts. I wrote one; it was the shit. They was like, ‘Yo, we don’t want Craig and Day-Day in jail, ’cause Craig and Day-Day went to jail for selling weed before it was legal!”
He continued: “Then after they rejected it they had all these fucking movies about going to jail: Orange Is The New Black … Get Hard. So then I wrote another script, and the script was really about … the youngsters in the hood having beef with the OG’s in the hood and Craig has to come back and squash that because Smokey’s son is the new Deebo and he’s wylin!
“They tripped on it man, they fucked around and then John Witherspoon passed. Then Deebo passed … they just fucked it up.”
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LL sat down midway through Cube’s rant and agreed the series has to go on. “One thing about it is it’s an unbelievable franchise and it definitely needs to continue,” the Rock The Bells founder chimed in.
The first Friday film dropped to commercial acclaim in 1995, and Ice Cube followed it up with Next Friday and Friday After Next in 2000 and 20
A fourth entry in the franchise has been rumored for a while now, tentatively titled Last Friday, but Cube has admitted numerous incidents, including all the aforementioned cast members passing away, have prevented him from finishing it.
“I really apologize to my friend for not getting the next Friday movie made,” he said during Witherspoon’s funeral in 2019. “It’s not my fault. Some dumbass people in Hollywood at New Line Cinema, if you wanna … you can email Toby Emmerich and Richard Brener if you feel like I feel. Yeah, you punks had two scripts and you didn’t wanna do them.
“That’s the real. We were tryin’ to make that movie for years and we couldn’t get it done. We got the other three and we got our memories.”
[via]