Ice Cube Outlines Rejected ‘Friday 4’ Script: ‘I Know What It Needs to Be’

In an interview with Cam Newton on his Funky Friday podcast, rapper and actor Ice Cube outlined the original script for a fourth Friday movie that New Line Cinema rejected.

When the subject of a potential fourth movie came up, Ice Cube reconfirmed that he wants to do another one but suggested there's been some roadblocks. "I've been wanting to do this since Friday After Next," he shared. "The issue was New Line [Cinema], they didn't want to do the movie the way I wanted it done."

Cube, who starred in and wrote all three of the movies in the Friday trilogy, insisted that he didn't want the studio to dictate the direction of a fourth entry. "I know these characters, know this culture and everything," he continued. "I know what it need to be. And they don't. So they had a guy in there named Toby Emmerich and he wouldn't make the movie, we was trying to get it made."

He shared some plot details for the rejected script, which would have seen his character Craig Jones reunite with Mike Epps' character Daymond Jones.

"I wrote a script where Craig and Day, they had a dispensary and they had a flash mob in there and they caught one of the kids and beat his little ass and they end up going to jail," he shared. "So they in jail ducking Deebo, they in jail ducking Damon, they in jail ducking the Joker brothers."

He said the movie would have eventually led to the two characters going to rehab, where Craig Jones would run into Chris Tucker's character Smokey from the first movie.

"It was a bullshit rehab where [Smokey] was taking everybody's weed and smoking it in the little basement and shit," he laughed. "And so, they was like, 'Jail is not funny, it's too much time in jail. How can you make jail funny?' 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, and I'm like, 'See.' More Hollywood execs don't know what the fuck they talking about."

Newton asked why he hadn't considered approaching Lee Daniels to get a fourth movie funded, but Cube clarified that it wouldn't be that simple because New Line Cinema has the rights to the franchise. The studio has since been merged into Warner Brothers.

At one point he attempted to take it to another studio, but New Line wasn't on board with the idea because they had already passed on the comedy Ride Along, which grossed $154 million on a $25 million budget, and Straight Outta Compton, the N.W.A. biopic. The studio continued to sit on the idea, and in the years that followed, some of the cast such as John Witherspoon and Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr. passed away.

"You're holding the happiness of the culture hostage by not making this movie, so they end up firing this dude," he said. Michael De Luca, the former president of production at New Line Cinema, has since rejoined Warner Bros. as co-chairman and CEO and wants to get the fourth entry made. "Mike De Luca, do the right thing!" said Newton, to which Ice Cube added, "He doing it! ... We're getting the paperwork right."

In a chat with Flavor Flav on his Sirius XM show Flavor of the Week in June this year, Cube announced that there have been talks to get the project off the ground.

"We finally got some traction with Warner Brothers,” Cube explained. "They have new leadership. My man Mike DeLuca, who used to be at New Line [Cinema] when I first started, when I first did the first Friday and Players Club and All About the Benjamins. Mike DeLuca was there, so now he’s running Warner Brothers. ... Him and my man Michael Gruber was like, 'Yo, what the fuck is going on with Friday? Man, let's get this shit back online."

Cube also recently sat down for an interview with Complex for Idea Generation, in which he spoke about the genesis of N.W.A. and what it was like meeting the late Friday director John Singleton for the first time.