Source: Ray Mickshaw / Getty
West Coast legend Ice Cube may have made headlines for attempting to negotiate on behalf of Black America. Still, it appears his contract with Warner Bros. is what needed the closer examination.
According to Cube, production studio Warner Bros. is pumping the breaks on his Friday franchise’s success by refusing to produce any further content bearing the cult classic’s name. On Friday (Feb 26), the “Good Day” rapper took to Instagram to air out the production house for “hi-jacking the happiness of the culture,” after noting that the company has refused to make more sequels for the film.
“#freefriday from the jaws of Warner Bros. who refuses to make more sequels,” Ice Cube wrote. “They have hi-jacked the happiness of the culture.”
While the Bootlegs and B-Sides multi-faceted emcee stopped short of any further details, it didn’t stop fans from rallying support for the Hip-Hop icon, equating the move by Warner Bros to that which Dave Chappelle recently experienced with Comedy Central, with the post almost at half a million likes it appears that it won’t be long before Cube achieves his goals as fans poise themselves to rally behind the cause.
“We all can come together to help, it helped Dave Chappelle get his name back,” one fan wrote in the comments.
Earlier this week, during an interview with DJ Khaled, Cube reflected on how he felt about his iconic film achieving monumental success while being his first screenplay as one of the world’s biggest rappers.
“It was like being on cloud nine,” Ice Cube said. “It took a lot of hard work and keeping my head down while I’m grinding to make this come true. We took the story from icons like Robert Townsend who has a dope-ass movie called Hollywood Shuffle, that probably cost $250,000 to make but it’s a classic. So we decided we wanted to make one.”
Ice Cube’s post is the latest in a series of teasers regarding the franchise’s fourth installment. Over the last decade, Cube and the cast have talked of additional sequels to the original Friday and its two subsequent films, including a teased return of Chris Tucker in the role of Smokey, to no avail, leading to the Hollywood hitmaker’s frustration.
Tucker has since thrown a big ole bucket of cold water on that idea stating during an interview with Shannon Sharpe on his Club Shay Shay podcast that he wanted to move on from the Friday film franchise.
“I wanted to move on because when I did something, I never wanted to do it again,” Tucker states. “Back then, I was all about going to the next level. I had a good sense of like, ‘OK, now it’s time to go do an action movie.’”
“So when they asked me to do a Friday, I was like, ‘Nah, I wanna go do something else. We done did that,” he continued. “…I was thinking about my career, saying, ‘Nah I wanna go do Money Talks or something.’ Let me do my own movie,” he further added.
During a 2019 appearance on ESPN’s The Jump, Ice Cube confirmed he and his team had completed the script for a fourth sequel titled Last Friday and that his goal was to release the film on the 25th anniversary of the original’s release.
“We are pushing for it, we finished the script, we are getting notes from the studio, and it’s going back and forth,” Ice Cube said. “Get into pre-production and start hiring. It would be nice for this to come out on the 25th anniversary.”
Told y’all it’s coming… #Friday pic.twitter.com/p15BEBBnFn
— Ice Cube (@icecube) May 3, 2019
As of press time, Warner Bros. hasn’t responded to Ice Cube’s claim.
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Photo: Ray Mickshaw / Getty
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