The Wayans Brothers Return for Scary Movie 6
The Wayans Brothers are ready to make Scary Movie great again. The comedy family – which consists of Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and although he isn’t usually included in the team with his brothers and has nothing to do with these films, Damon Wayans – is returning to the franchise they started for Scary Movie 6, according to a Deadline exclusive and an X post by Marlon Wayans. Scary Movie is a series of horror movie spoofs that began with a send-up of slasher movies, specifically Scream; Scary Movie 2, also from the Wayans Brothers, focused on ghosts and haunted house movies, particularly The Haunting. Kennan Ivory Wayans directed both films, with Shawn and Marlon Wayans co-writing them (with a host of others) and playing two of the major roles. Starting with Scary Movie 3, the Wayans Brothers left, and David Zucker took over as director, bringing in actors like Leslie Nielsen and Charlie Sheen and writers Pat Profit and Craig Mazin. This team continued through Scary Movie 4, but for Scary Movie 5, Malcom D. Lee took over as director while David Zucker wrote the script with Pat Profit. The upcoming film will be Scary Movie 6 (if they keep to the title scheme; technically, it’s untitled right now). There’s no other information on Scary Movie 6 yet.
WE’RE BACK!!! After nearly 20 years, the Wayans brothers are finally going to give the fans what they’ve been asking for… a return to the SCARY MOVIE franchise! We’re looking forward to having fun on the big screen again. pic.twitter.com/iWGrh4IWrh
— marlon wayans (@MarlonWayans) October 29, 2024
This is exciting. If you’ve never seen them, Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 are absolutely hilarious, fantastic spoofs of a then-resurgent horror genre that expertly lampooned various scenes, characters, and tropes, as well as other pop culture elements. Part of the fun was that they were R-rated and proudly politically incorrect; they didn’t set out to offend anyone, but they didn’t care about pissing off pearl-clutchers. After the Wayans Brothers left, Scary Movie 3 came out, and it was a massive step down. First of all, it wasn’t really spoofing horror movies; it was more about alien invasion movies like Mars Attacks! and Signs (the former of which is kind of a spoof already). It was also rated PG-13 and lacked the bite of the previous two films. David Zucker has made some excellent spoofs with his brother Jeff and collaborators Pat Profit and Jim Abrahams, like The Naked Gun, Airplane!, BASEketball, and Top Secret!, but the team was just a bad fit for the Scary Movie franchise. I didn’t see Scary Movie 4 or 5 – before reading up on the series for this piece, I wasn’t even sure how many they’d made – but I haven’t heard good things, and by 5, they’d lost the two holdovers from the Wayans Brothers era, Anna Faris and Regina Hall. My great hope for Scary Movie 6 is that the Wayans Brothers bring them back for a worthy sequel that captures the magic of the first two films.
Part of that magic is returning to the irreverent, politically incorrect, anything-goes humor of Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2, and that’s a dicey proposition in the age of woke. The perpetually offended are almost certainly writing their stick-up-their-ass reviews as we speak, prepared to wear out their keyboards on obnoxious terms like “tone deaf” and “punching down” and whatever else they can pretend to think. Before that, you’ll likely see a bunch of opinion pieces about how the first two Scary Movie films “haven’t aged well” because they remain funny. That’s inevitable because we live in the most annoying era in human history; the cavemen may have been eaten by sabretooth tigers, but at least they didn’t have to hear some dweeb tell them their language was “cis-hetero-normative” or whatever. But to make this movie successful, the Wayans Brothers – and, more importantly, the studio that produces Scary Movie 6 – have to ignore it and make Scary Movie 6 as though it were Scary Movie 3 from twenty years ago with the Wayans Brothers in charge. This could end up being the ultimate middle finger to woke entertainment culture, the signal that it’s okay to make great comedies again, and if it’s not only written and filmed that way but advertised as such, I think it will be a massive hit. Who knew it’d be Shorty leading the charge to save pop culture?
Let us know what you think of the Wayans Brothers returning for Scary Movie 6 in the comments!
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