This summer Ice Cube promised fans that progress was finally being made in his years-long battle to deliver the fourth and final installment of the Friday franchise. He attributed a shakeup in leadership at Warner Bros. Entertainment as the catalyst behind gaining momentum in moving the project forward.
“We finally got some traction with Warner Bros. They have new leadership. My man Mike De Luca, 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 De Luca was there... So, now he’s running Warner Bros.,” he told Flavor Flav during the June taping of “Flavor of the Week.”
The cult classic Friday came out in 1995, starring Cube, Chris Tucker, Tommy Lister Jr., John Witherspoon, Nia Long and Regina King. Its box office success and cultural impact spawned two additional films: Next Friday in 2000, which introduced the masses to comedian Mike Epps, and Friday After Next in 2002, which put eyes on Katt Williams. Now, in a Nov. 22 interview for “Funky Friday” with Cam Newton, the co-founding N.W.A. member has revealed the stalled plans he had in mind for the film, at least, tentatively called Last Friday.
Among the obstacles he dealt with behind the scenes was getting studio executives to see his vision for the installment, which would have reunited fan-favorite characters such as Smokey, Ezal and Deebo, as well as brought back Craig’s (portrayed by Cube) on-screen dad, Willie “Pops” Jones. Respectively, the roles were portrayed by Tucker and now-late actors Lister, Anthony Johnson and Witherspoon.
Cube recalled, “With a Friday movie, I don’t want no studio telling me how to do this movie. I know these characters, know this culture and everything; I know what it need to be, and they don’t.” But then-head of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group Toby Emmerich never gave the project the green light. Emmerich left the studio in 2022, with De Luca stepping in to oversee its film group. As the “Bow Down” rapper previously shared, the screenplay got stuck in development purgatory. He was unable to move the film to a new studio due to the deal he signed with New Line, which tethered them to the franchise.
The story Cube penned would have seen Friday’s villains and come face-to-face with his and Epps’ characters. “I wrote a script where Craig and Day Day, they had a dispensary… and they had a flash mob in there, and they caught one of the kids and beat his little a**, and they end up going to jail. So they in jail ducking Deebo, they in jail ducking Damon, they in jail ducking the Joker Brothers, and then they get into a rehab,” the West Coast rap icon told Newton.
Moreover, he noted that he would have made an effort to woo Tucker back to the franchise. The comic only appeared in the original screenplay but has since shared he would be open to reprising his role if the right story came along. According to Cube, his plan was to “get Chris back [with] Smokey running the rehab, and it was a bulls**t rehab where he was taking everybody weed and smoking it in the little basement and s**t.”
The notes he received from studio executives included being told, “‘Jail’s not funny, it’s too much time in jail, how can you make jail funny.’ And I’m like, man, y’all don’t know what the f**k y’all talking about. Then they come out with ‘Orange is the New Black,’ Let’s Go to Prison, all these movies about that, and I’m like, see, more Hollywood execs don’t know what the f**k they talking about.” The Hip Hop OG said that at that point, his thoughts about the decision-makers were, “You’re holding the happiness of the culture hostage by not making this movie.”
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