Ice Cube Claims Studio is Now Ready to “Make the Next ‘Friday’”
The former president of New Line Cinema, which distributed the Friday franchise, is now CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.
After detailing the many challenges he’s faced to get a fourth Friday film made, it looks like luck is finally shining on Ice Cube.
In a recent interview on Cam Newton’sFunky Friday podcast, the West Coast rapper and filmmaker offered an update on the long-in-the-works sequel.
Turns out that Michael De Luca, the former president of New Line Cinema, which distributed Cube’s Friday franchise (as well as other films Cube led like The Players Club and All About the Benjamins), is now the CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, which New Line is under — and he’s helping to get a new Friday movie made.
“Now, Mike De Luca is there. Mike De Luca, we did the first Friday when he was at New Line,” Cube said, adding, “He knows how I get down, so now he’s ready to make the next Friday.”
Shortly after, Cube continued, “We’re getting the paperwork right. Soon as that happens, we’re off and running.”
During the Funky Friday appearance, Cube also expressed his frustration with studio executives who didn’t get his original concept for a fourth Friday film, which is something he has previously shared in past interviews.
He told Newton how execs weren’t feeling his original script, which was centered around Cube and Mike Epps’ characters, Craig and Day-Day, respectively, having a dispensary and getting into an altercation with a kid in the store, leading to them being in jail with some of the franchise’s big bads.
“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,” Cube said, noting that the rehab would’ve been run by Chris Tucker’s Smokey, “where he was taking everybody’s weed and smoking it.”
“They were like, ‘Jail’s not funny, it’s too much time in jail. How can you make jail funny?’” Cube recalled the execs saying. “And I’m like, ‘Man, y’all don’t know what the fuck y’all talking about.’”
“Then they come out with Orange is the New Black, Let’s Go to Prison, all these movies about that,” he continued. “And I’m like, ‘See, more Hollywood execs don’t know what the f**k they talking about.’”
Although it’s not exactly clear when this happened, considering the projects Cube named came out between 2006 and 2013, it seems that by then he was dealing with execs at Warner Bros., considering New Line had merged with the company in 2008. De Luca joined Warner Bros. in 2022.
Although Cube has continued acting since the Friday franchise came to a stop, it’s been quite some time since he’s led a movie of his own, with the last one he produced, wrote and starred in being 2009’s Janky Promoters.