Credit: Friday
Ice Cube isn’t happy with Warner Bros. All the attention and talks about Warner Bros Discovery has been about the future of DC films mainly and the company’s decision to axe a show from their streaming service; however, Cube has been throwing shade at the studio about the rights to his Friday movies. The rapper/actor starred in and wrote all three Friday films that first came out in 1995; Critics and fans loved the feature, and despite its incredibly crass humor and paper-thin characters, there was a certain charm to the first Friday that was undeniable. Plus, there were genuinely funny moments. However, the following films, Next Friday and Friday After Next, were reviewed by critics. Fans still enjoyed the product overall, but the Friday franchise was never a huge box office draw, as the highest-grossing film was the second installment, which made $59.8 million.
It’s been 20 years since the last Friday movie, and the cast of the original feature has moved on to much bigger projects. However, Cube wants to revisit the franchise for another sequel, with the 53-year-old revealing to Drink Champs in October that the studio rejected two of his scripts for a fourth installment. This didn’t come as a surprise as there have been whispers about a potential fourth film; however, news came out in 2021 about Cube and Warner Bros having creative differences regarding Last Friday, which is the fourth film’s title. Warner Bros shot back and made it clear they had no interest in giving him the rights because his demands had been “extortionate.”
Credit: Friday
After that, Ice Cube has been seeking the rights to the franchise overall; however, the rapper/actor refuses to pay a dime for something he created, “I don’t know. Warner Brothers are weird right now,” Cube told Mike Tyson on his Hotboxin podcast when he asked about a Friday movie. “I don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re doing. We’d love to have it back. But, I think it will be close to a time when we get it back. So, we’ll either wait for that time or keep trying to convince them that they need to let us control the movie. It’s my movie, but they have distribution control.”
It’s easy to see Ice Cube’s point of view on the situation. The Friday franchise is his baby, and like Sylvester Stallone with Rocky, he wants to have control over the very thing he created. Regarding this situation, I don’t know about it other than what’s been reported; however, from the outside looking in, it does seem as if Cube is being a bit unfair here. It sounds as if Cube didn’t like his work being criticized because the studio gave him an obsessive amount of notes. The rapper/actor is intelligent, so he should understand that he signed a contract; thus, engaging in a war demanding Warner Bros to hand over the rights for free is never going to work in his favor. However, Cube doesn’t seem to be backing down from his dispute with the studio based on his comments:
Credit: Friday
“I ain’t putting shit up for it. Fuck no. They need to give it to me, and they’ll make money. I’m not about to pay for my 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.” Since Warner Bros has made it clear that they have no interest in doing so, this fight isn’t ending anytime soon.
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