When the original Scary Movie opened on July 7, 2000, it earned a very respectable weekend total of $42 million in the thick of the summer movie season, on its way to a lifetime gross of more than $157 million. Unfortunately, the sequel and second collaboration between the Wayans Brothers and Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg didn’t fare as well, earning just $20 million on its opening weekend and about $71 million overall. So when it came time for the third installment, Dimension wised up and pushed the release back to October.
The studio also pushed out the Wayans brothers and brought in David Zucker, Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex, while allowing Seltzer-Freebird to stay on as the writers, and Marlon Wayans has been pissed off about that to this day. Back in January, Marlon told TMZ that he wipes his ass with Scary Movie residual checks, and he also told Hitflix that Scary Movie 5 looks like an episode of Celebrity Rehab, which, to be fair, is accurate.
But Marlon’s angst toward his old franchise also stems from his belief that “there’s an art to comedy” and he is correct. So then why the hell is he making A Haunted House 2?
“[Producer] Rick [Alvarez] and I are excited about embarking on this journey again. IM Global has been a great, supportive partner and Open Road did a fantastic job marketing and releasing the movie. I’m looking forward to doing it again, mainly because of the fun we had the first time around. ‘Fun’ is the keyword when doing funny.
I don’t know if “fun” is as much of a keyword as “profit”, because this sequel is only being made after making $40 million at the box office on a budget of $2.5 million. But for comparison, Scary Movie 4, which was released in 2006, grossed $5 million more than A Haunted House in its opening weekend alone. So it will be interesting to see how the public responds to Scary Movie 5 this weekend, seven years later.
Will people prefer the lazy, terrible, depressing, dumbed-down, opposite-of-comedy, Celebrity Rehab-esque “humor” of Scary Movie 5 that relies more on pop culture references than it does on actual jokes?
Or will they prefer the artistic nuances and subtle genius of a comedy icon and legendary writer – he’s written FIVE whole movies!!! – like Marlon Wayans, who really dares us to think with jokes like “The ghost that farts”…
And “the demon has bad breath”…
And especially “black guy named Ray-Ray”…
Goodness, you’ll have to excuse me. I feel like I just walked through the Louvre.