Ice Cube Demands Warner Bros. Give Him Control of Friday Franchise
Ice Cube is looking to gain back creative control of the Friday film franchise from Warner Bros. The former N.W.A. performer parlayed his rap career into becoming a leading man when he headlined 1995's Friday. Ice Cube co-wrote Friday with DJ Pooh, where he starred alongside Chris Tucker in the latter's breakout role as Smokey. Friday was a surprise hit of the '90s and became a cult classic, spawning two more sequels – 2000's Next Friday and 2002's Friday After Next. Chris Tucker was replaced by Mike Epps as Ice Cube's comedic partner in Next Friday and Friday After Next, and a fourth film, Last Friday, is tentatively in the works.
However, Ice Cube states development of Last Friday is being held up by Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the Friday franchise after acquiring New Line Cinema, producer and distributor of the Friday movies. Ice Cube was a guest on Mike Tyson's Hotboxin' podcast, where he demanded Warner Bros. give him control of the Friday franchise so he can make the next installment.
"I don't know. Warner Bros. is weird right now," Cube said when asked about Last Friday. "I don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing. We'd love to have it back. I think it's going be close to a time when we get it back. So, we'll either wait for that time, or we'll keep trying to convince them that they need to let us control the movie. It's my movie, but they have distribution control."
Ice Cube also scoffed at the idea of paying Warner Bros. for the rights so he can have creative control again. "I ain't putting sh-t up for it. F-ck no," he responded. "They need to give it to me, and they're going to make money. I'm not about to pay for my own stuff, that's stupid. They need to do the right thing, get it to us, let us turn it into more money, and make the fans happy…We can do a lot with it."
Why Warner Bros. Rejected Scripts for Friday Sequels
Warner Bros. has rejected the script for two more Friday sequels, according to Ice Cube. He made that revelation back in October during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast at LL Cool J's Rock The Bells festival.
"I'm trying to get it out of Warner Bros. They don't believe in the culture, man," Cube said, explaining that the studio holds distribution rights to the franchise created by Cube and co-writer DJ Pooh.
"Once I take the character's names, it becomes a property of Friday," Cube said of a potential name change. "It's useless. They just need to come off that sh-t!"
Cube wrote two Friday sequel scripts that were "the sh-t," he said, but both were rejected by Warner Bros. "They were like, 'Yo, we don't want Craig and Day Day in jail,'" Cube said of Craig and his cousin Daymond "Day Day" Jones (Mike Epps). "Because Craig and Day Day went to jail for selling weed before it was legal."
"That sh-t is funny," he said. "After they rejected it, they had all these movies about going to jail. Orange Is the New Black, Get Hard, so I was like, 'Man, see, y'all f— me up.'" Cube's second script was "about the youngsters in the hood having beef with the OGs in the hood, and Craig has to come back and squash that. Because Smokey's [Tucker's] son is the new Deebo [Tommy Lister Jr.], and he's wilding."
But Warner Bros. "tripped on it," Cube said. "They f—ed around, and then John Witherspoon [who played Craig's father, Willie Jones] passed, [Lister Jr.] passed, [Ezal actor A.J. Johnson] passed. There's a lot of characters who were going to go back to the hood. They just f—ed it up."
