Scary Movie launched an entire franchise off spoofing classic horror films in 2000. But after the first two installments, the Wayans Brothers were noticeably missing from the following two sequels.
The first two films starred Marlon and his brother Shawn, and were directed by their eldest brother Keenan Wayans.
Marlon Wayans appeared on Kevin Hart’s Comedy Gold Minds podcast and opened up about why his family really walked away from the successful movie.
“We didn’t walk away from a franchise, they didn’t want to make our deal and they snatched it,” he explained.
“They was like, they just did, Weinstein did some really terrible, like rape and pillage villages type of business,” he elaborated. That’s just the way they did their business, so it wasn’t that we, we ever walked away from our franchise that we created, it was taken and us being the creatives that we are was like ‘alright, bet. F–k you, now watch what I create.’ “
The first Scary Movie installment raked in more than $270 million in global Box Office ticket sales, with a $19 million budget.
Even though the fans were laughing and the money was coming in, Marlon explained that his relationship with The Weinstein Company eventually went left.
“The second one they rushed us into and by the third one they didn’t want to pay the money so they snatched it. We found out on Christmas that they hired somebody else to go do it, like n—a write a book about this s–t,” said the In Living Coloralum.
The famed comedian learned a valuable lesson from the fallout, and successfully continued his career as a writer, producer, and actor.
“You can take that, we probably should sue for hundreds of millions of dollars because they probably owe us a s–t load of money, and maybe one day we will, but that, we didn’t walk away from our franchise, them n—-s took it.”
Listen to the entire episode below:
