Ice Cube has been vocal about his dispute with Warner Bros. over the ownership of his Friday film franchise, and the West Coast icon has now offered an update on its future.
During an interview on Sirius XM’s Flavor Of The Week that aired on Monday (June 17), he revealed that the series could be brought back to life after more than two decades of inactivity.
“We finally got some traction with Warner Bros.,” he told host Flavor Flav. “They have new leadership. My man Mike DeLuca, who used to be at New Line when I first started, when I first did the first Friday and Players Club and All About the Benjamins. Mike DeLuca was there, so now he’s running Warner Bros.”
Additionally, the N.W.A alum also shared a recap of his talks with the studio.
“It was like, ‘Yo, what the fuck is going on with Friday? Man, let’s get this back online,'” he continued. “And I was a little hot ’cause they had took so long because John Witherspoon passed away. Tiny passed away. A.J. Johnson passed away. Like, man, we keep losing people and y’all keep dicking around not doing the movie the way it need to be done. They want to do it, but the key is it gotta be done, or we shouldn’t fuck with it. So they finally came to their senses.”
So far, the trilogy comprises Friday (1995), Next Friday (2000) and Friday After Next (2002). Last year, Cube revealed that Warner Bros. owns not only the name of the franchise he created but also the names of its characters.
“You gotta use the same [intellectual property],” he stated. “Can’t call it Saturday without using Craig and Day-Day. So it’s the same thing, really.”
While vowing to continue fighting for its ownership, the LA legend made it clear that he’s not interested in entering into a legal battle with his former studio partners. However, he did state that he will keep trying to “convince Warner Bros. that they’re wrong.”
The 55-year-old rap veteran first confirmed that he was working on a fourth installment in the series during a late night interview back in 2017. However, that film has yet to materialize.
During a live taping of Drink Champs at the Rock The Bells festival in 2022, the “No Vaseline” MC explained that he presented two scripts to the studio, both of which were rejected.
“I’m trying to get it out of Warner Brothers, they don’t believe in the culture man,” he said at the time, sharing that they retain the 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!
“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!”
He added: “They tripped on it man, they fucked around and then John Witherspoon passed. Then Deebo passed … they just fucked it up.”
