Ice Cube isn’t giving up his fight to give the Friday franchise the final installment it deserves. For years, Cube has spoken out about the difficulties he’s encountered while trying to get Warner Bros. on board with making 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,” Cube said during an appearance on the “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson” podcast on Friday (Dec. 2). He continued: “I think it’s gon’ 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.”
Cube and DJ Pooh penned the scripts for the first three films
Friday, Next Friday, and Friday After Next. The iconic West Coast rapper said that two versions of a script for Last Friday have already been written. The first was struck down due to bad timing, though Cube has a different opinion about the decision. The second was buried under notes from Warner Bros. “It was in development h**l. They just kept giving you note after note after note, never giving you the green light,” he explained.
When asked if he would be willing to pay for the rights to the film, Cube responded: “I ain’t putting s**t up for it. F**k no. They need to give it to me, and they gon’ make money. I’m not about to pay for my own stuff, that’s stupid.”
The franchise, which helped launch the acting careers of Chris Tucker, Mike Epps, Katt Williams, and Terry Crews, has made more than $100 million. The “You Can Do It” artist added the studio simply needs to “do the right thing, get it to us, let us turn it into more money, and make the fans happy, and people will have a good time with the series.” He also noted that it is highly unlikely the studio will release more of his intellectual property to him after the success of Ride Along and Straight Outta Compton — both films were originally under development with the studio, but Cube managed to move them to Universal, where they made millions at the box office.
When asked if there was at least a chance for a sequel to 2002’s action-comedy flick All About the Benjamins, Cube said the movie is caught in the same crosshairs as Last Friday. “It’s the same dumba** company. They got that one too, so probably not,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re holding onto classics and they don’t want to go forward. I don’t know if it’s personal or not; it seems stupid.”
You can watch the full interview below.