Now you know we do not care what the paperwork says: the Friday movie franchise belongs to Ice Cube. And this week, the man himself shared that he’s been trying to get that point across to the powers that be for years. During a recent appearance on Mike Tyson’s podcast “Hotboxin’,” Cube calls out the Warner Bros. studio for refusing to green-light “Last Friday.”
Around the midway point of the hour-long interview, co-host Matt Barnes asks the legendary West Coast rapper turned film producer for an update on the fourth and final Friday film. Cube unfortunately confirms that he’s unsure if it will ever see the light of day, despite the number of fans who have been demanding to see it for the last two decades.
“I don’t know. Warner Brothers is weird right now,” Cube said. “I don’t know what they doing, they don’t know what they doing. We’d love to have it back. 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.”
At that point, Tyson asks whether or not Cube might purchase the rights to the franchise, considering the fact that he’s written all three movies prior. But the rapper/actor said he had no interest.
“I ain’t putting shit up for it. Fuck no,” he insisted. “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 … 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.”
And as it turns out, Cube has been thinking about what’s next for the beloved characters for years, and has even written two screenplays already for what would be the final film. The first he says was rejected by Warner Bros. because “the timing wasn’t right.” The second apparently went nowhere.
“It was in development hell,” he said about the second script. “They just kept giving you note after note after note, never giving you the green light.”
While we may not be seeing Last Friday on screen any time soon, Cube did speak on his other forthcoming project. Mount Westmore, the supergroup he formed alongside other West Coast hip hop legends, Snoop Dogg, E-40, and Too Short, is set to release its debut album.
“We did it to make sure that the record is iconic, because the group is iconic,” he shared. “And the record has a lot of different personalities, you know. We’re having a lot of fun on the record. Of course, we’re spittin’ game.”
He continued: “And, you know, we’re also showing how ferocious we still are on the mic … Hopefully it’s a great example to other OGs in the game, that they can get together, too. You know, we can have a Mount Eastmore, Southmore. It’s never over if you stay creative and innovative. And if you keep your bars up, you good.”