It’s been almost 20 years since the debut of Ice Cube’s Friday After Next, the third film released in 2002 under the “No Vaseline” rapper’s Friday franchise. As a result, there has been major speculation regarding whether there will be another sequel to the original 1995 cult favorite, and during an episode of the Drink Champs podcast at LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells festival, Cube gave an update on why it doesn’t seem promising.
“I’m trying to get it out of Warner Bros. They don’t believe in the culture, man,” Ice Cube said to the podcast hosts, N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN.
The 53-year-old Los Angeles native explained that Warner Bros. holds distribution rights to the Friday films. “Once I take the character’s names, it becomes a property of Friday,” Cube added about people asking him to possibly change the film’s name. “It’s useless. They just need to come off that shit!”
According to Cube, the studio rejected two of his scripts for the movie. The first script included the characters Craig (Ice Cube) and Da Da (Mike Epps) going to jail for selling marijuana.
“The shit is funny,” Ice Cube said. “After they rejected it, they had all these movies about going to jail. So I was like, ‘Man, see, y’all fuck me up.’ The other script was about the youngsters in the hood having beef with the OGs, and Craig has to come back and squash that. Smokey’s [Chris Tucker’s] son is the new Deebo [Tommy Lister Jr.], and he’s wilding.”
Cube added that Warner Bros. “tripped on it.” He also talked about some of Friday’s prominent performers passing away, including John Witherspoon, who played Cube’s father in the films; Lister, who played Deebo; and A.J. Johnson, who played Ezal.
When asked if Tucker would star in another film, Cube said the comedian and actor hasn’t expressed full interest in doing another Friday. “Chris is slippy,” said Cube. “But me and Chris is cool.”
As far as potential follow-ups to Cube’s other notable projects, like the 2002 movie All About the Benjamins and his 1998 film The Players Club, Cube said progress is tied up due to Warner Bros. “Once again, another Warner Bros. fuck-up,” Cube concluded.
A representative for Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story first appeared on Billboard.com.
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