During a recent interview on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast, Scary Movie mastermind Marlon Wayans revealed why he and his family no longer have an association with the legendary comedy franchise they created after getting a “crappy” deal on the first installment. “I’m gonna have to drink on this, man,” Wayans told Sharpe before pouring himself a tall cocktail and recounting the tale.
Scary Movie was conceived by Marlon Wayans alongside his brothers, Shawn Wayans and Keenan Ivory Wayans. Aiding in the screenplay’s creation were Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman, who at the time wrote for The Wayans Bros., the siblings’ sitcom. The script was purchased and developed by Miramax, the production company infamously overseen by Harvey Weinstein and “his evil, ugly brother Bob [Weinstein],” Wayans told Sharpe.
“The first one we got a crappy deal, definitely. But the second one, we got a good deal on the second one,” Wayans explained. The actor claims in the wake of the “unheard of” box office success of Scary Movie and its immediate sequel, the studio promised a deal in the $30 million range for Scary Movie 3.
But when it came time to pitch, “They make an offer for what we made on the first one,” Wayans revealed to Sharpe. “You feel that outrageous feeling you felt?” he added. “We felt that times three.”
“They were terrible people. Terrible people,” Wayans continued of the Weinsteins. “They took the franchise from us, took it from us. And then they stole the idea for the third one. They took it from us and gave it to somebody else because we couldn’t make a deal. So, they gave it to somebody else, and they didn’t tell us. We read about it in the papers.”
The baton was passed to David Zucker, the mastermind behind Airplane!, but even with that pedigree the franchise struggled to find the financial success it did early on and grew further removed from its initial concept.
“You can try, but you can’t do Wayans s--t without the Wayans,” Wayans said. “You can try, but you’re gonna lose a lot of money,” he added, noting that his family has “a lot of years of excellence” behind them. “We have 200 years of comedy between me, Shawn, and Keenan, Damon, Kim,” he said of his other siblings. “You can’t just put anybody on them.”
The comedian went on to say that karma took care of his work for him, though he wishes he sued the Weinsteins for stealing their idea. “Sometimes you ain’t gotta do nothing because God’s gonna do it all—God’s revenge,” Wayans said of the criminal actions that toppled Harvey Weinstein. “When God come for you, you gotta trust God. You don’t retaliate, vengeance is mine.”
Meanwhile, Wayans and the rest of his kin have made out just fine. “We go on, made our money,” he said. White Chicks made another classic. Little Man made another classic. We do our thing.”
You can watch Wayans' full Club Shay Shay interview below.
