In 1988, Keenan Ivory Wayans made a big splash in comedy cinema with the Blaxploitation spoof I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. The Wayans brothers continued their spoof legacy in the late 90s with Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, which riffed on urban inner city dramas. Then, the family reached bigger heights with their ultra-successful Scary Movie, which took a bite out of the wave of teenage slashers at the start of the new millennium. Scary Movie made $278 million on a $19 million budget, so a sequel was inevitable. Scary Movie 2 would then go on to gross $141 million on a $45 million budget.
While the sequel wasn’t as big a moneymaker as the first, it was a moneymaker nevertheless. So, a third movie was in negotiation when the Wayans tried to get a better deal after the success of the first two. Marlon Wayans has revealed that the Weinstein brothers, who ran Miramax, the studio behind the Scary Movie films, went ahead to make the third movie without them. According to Variety, Wayans explained,
We didn’t even know. We got an announcement on New Year’s Eve that they were doing ‘Scary Movie 3.’ The franchise was stripped from us. And we were just asking for our fair share.”sponsored content
Wayans also remembers his initial impression on working with the Weinsteins on the 1998 comedy, Senseless. He revealed that just before making Senseless, the Weinsteins sent him a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to read. He explains, “I read it and immediately knew who they were. They rape and pillage villages. They were tyrants and had a dynasty. But a lot of those dynasties with dictators, they die a terrible death, and then there’s a new regime. There’s a karma to life, and there’s a karma to business.”
The comedic actor also says that the Weinsteins used a “Hollywood accounting loophole” to deny the Wayans family their royalties from the Scary Movie franchise. This is the same loophole that documentary filmmaker Michael Moore also accused them of when he wasn’t paid for his work on Fahrenheit 9/11.