In a new post to Instagram, Ice Cube has alleged that Warner Bros. has “hi-jacked” the Friday film franchise.
Friday – Ice Cube’s 1995 screenwriting debut – tells the story of two friends, Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (Chris Tucker), who spend the day smoking weed after Craig gets fired from his job.
As the day unfolds, the pair have to deal with a neighbourhood bully, relationship woes, an angry drug dealer and a whole host of other oddball characters that crop up.
Taking to the social media platform on Friday (February 26), Ice Cube posted an animated image of the film’s original cast alongside a blunt caption that accused the studio of not green lighting further films.
“#freefriday from the jaws of Warner Bros. who refuses to make more sequels. They have hi-jacked the happiness of the culture,” the post reads.
At the time of writing, more than a quarter of a million people had liked Ice Cube’s post.
The rapper’s post is the latest in a series of teases made over the last decade of additional sequels to the original Friday and its two subsequent films.
A second instalment, Next Friday, was released in 2000, with a third, Friday After Next, following two years later.
In a 2019 appearance on US network ESPN’s The Jump, Ice Cube – aka O’Shea Jackson – said he and a team had completed the script for a fourth film, entitled Last Friday, and his intention was to release it to celebrate the original film’s 25th anniversary.
“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.”
That never panned out, however, with sources telling TMZ that Jackson is getting more frustrated by the studio and is now looking to produce further sequels with another company. Warner Bros., however, reportedly refuses to release the rights to Jackson.
Following the 2019 death of John Witherspoon, who played Willie “Pops” Jones in the franchise, Jackson said it would be “back to the drawing board” on the script for Last Friday. He claimed that production studio New Line Cinema had be slow on green-lighting the script that was “full of Mr. Jones”.
“I’ve been pissed off about it since Spoon passed away,” Jackson said.