A fourth installment in the Friday franchise has never seen the light of day, but it’s not without Ice Cube trying.
Cube appeared on the latest episode of the Drink Champs podcast and host N.O.R.E. cut to the chase, bringing up at the 28:40 mark that he has been trying to get in touch with him about assuming any role, even if it means being an intern, in order to be on the set of the next Friday film. “Man, if I can get it off,” Cube responded. “I’m trying to get it out of Warner Brothers, they don’t believe in the culture man.”
Cube elaborated on the plot of the first script, and where it hit a snag with Warner Bros. “I had two scripts. I wrote one; it was the shit,” he said at the 29:45 mark. “They was like, ‘Yo, we don’t want Craig and Day-Day in jail, ’cause Craig and Day-Day went to jail for selling weed before it was legal.”
“So then I wrote another script, and the script was really about … the youngsters in the hood having beef with the OG’s in the hood and Craig has to come back and squash that because Smokey’s son is the new Deebo and he’s wildin,’” he continued. “They tripped on it man, they fucked around and then John Witherspoon passed. Then Deebo passed … they just fucked it up.”
The last entry released was Friday After Next, which came out two decades ago. In 2019, Cube stopped by the now-defunct ESPN show The Jump and seemed motivated to get the fourth movie in theaters for the original film’s 25th anniversary on April 26, 2020. “We are pushing for it, we finished the script, we are getting notes from the studio and it’s going back and forth,” he said. “Get into pre-production and start hiring. It would be nice for this to come out on the 25th anniversary.”
However, the pandemic, coupled with the death of John Witherspoon, appeared to put the fourth film on the backburner once again for the foreseeable future.
