Whether
anyone has been asking for it or not, there are plans underway for a fourth and
final “Friday” movie starring Ice Cube.
The first
one was released 20 years ago this month (how time truly flies) and, though the following
two sequels – “Next Friday” and “Friday After Next” – pretty much did not live up
to anyone’s expectations, there were profitable and popular enough.
So in a
recent interview (HERE), Ice Cube talked about the unexpected success of the original
film, adding that a fourth and final "Friday" film is now currently in development.
According to
Cube, not surprisingly, one of the major obstacles in getting the film off the
ground is its proposed budget, since everyone involved, especially Chris Tucker,
wants a lot more money than they were paid previously for the earlier films.
“You have a
lot of stars that I need to bring back. They wasn’t superstars when I first put
them in the movie, but they are now. So it cost a lot more money to make that
movie than it did in the past," Cube said.
Of course
Cube wants Tucker to reprise his role of Smokey from the first film, since he
did not appear in the two sequels; but Tucker has some demands of his own.
Understandably, he doesn’t want to simply just the play the same exact character, except now 20 years older. As Tucker
said in a radio interview recently: “If I do a movie like ‘Friday’ again, it has
to evolve… I evolved from Smokey when I was that age when I did that movie —
from when I did ‘Fifth Element’ or even the first ‘Rush Hour.’ So, every
character I look at now, I’m like, can I play it because of where I am right now? Because I pull a lot from real life. I put a lot of myself in the characters.”
Of course, saying you want to make a film, and the film actually getting made, are, in effect, 2 different things; so it remains to be seen if this final Friday will ever
see the light of day. And if the film does happen, are you interested in seeing it, or is it just something
from the past that was fine in its day, and we should move on?
What do you
say?
