The West Coast superstar Ice Cube has provided an update on the status of his Friday film franchise, which he has been public about being in conflict with Warner Bros. over ownership.
In an interview that aired on Monday, June 17, on Sirius XM’s Flavor Of The Week, he disclosed that the series might be revived following over two decades of discontinuity.
“With Warner Bros., we finally got some traction,” he said to host Flavor Flav. “They have a new management team. When I initially started doing the first Friday and Players Club and All About the Benjamins, my buddy Mike DeLuca was working at New Line. Mike DeLuca was there and is currently the head of Warner Bros.
The former N.W.A. member also provided a synopsis of his discussions with the studio.
What the heck is going on with Friday, I thought to myself. “Dude, let’s get this back up and running,” he said. And I felt a little uncomfortable because it had taken so long due to the demise of John Witherspoon. Tiny departed from this life. A.J. Johnson departed from us. Like, dude, you guys keep dicking around and not making the movie the way it has to be made, and we keep losing people. They want to accomplish it, but the important thing is that we shouldn’t mess with it if it can’t be done. Thus, they at last realized their mistake.
The trilogy now consists of Friday (1995), Friday After Next (2002), and Next Friday (2000). Cube disclosed last year that Warner Bros. is the owner of the character names as well as the franchise’s moniker.
He said, “You have to use the same [intellectual property].” “Without Craig and Day-Day, it can’t be called Saturday. Thus, it actually is the same thing.
The legendary LA artist stated that he will not be getting into a legal dispute with his former studio partners, even though he will keep battling for its ownership. He did, however, declare that he will not give up on “convincing Warner Bros. that they’re wrong.”
In a late-night interview from 2017, the 55-year-old rap veteran initially said that he was working on the fourth chapter of the series. But that movie hasn’t yet come to pass.
When Drink Champs was live-tapped at the Rock The Bells festival in 2022, the MC from “No Vaseline” said that he submitted two scripts to the studio, but they were both turned down.
He stated at the time, “I’m trying to get it out of Warner Brothers; they don’t believe in the culture man,” adding that they would keep the distribution rights for any future sequels.
“I wrote two different scripts. I wrote one, and it was awful. “Hey, we don’t want Craig and Day-Day in jail because they went to jail for selling marijuana before it was legal,” they exclaimed.
“After that, they rejected it, and then they had all these fucking jail movies, like Orange Is The New Black.Be Firm. I then wrote a second script, which was essentially about the younger kids in the neighborhood fighting with the older residents, and Craig having to go back and put an end to it because Smokey’s son is the new Deebo and he’s hot!
“They fucked around, they tripped on it, man,” he continued, “and then John Witherspoon passed away.” After Deebo died away, they simply screwed it up.
