Ice Cube is "back to the drawing board" for the latest Friday film, which was supposed to feature the late actor, John Witherspoon. John passed away on October 29th of this year due to heart-related issues, and has been remembered by those whose lives he touched ever since. Among his many beloved roles, John's character Mr. Jones, or "Pops," in the Friday films was a huge part of the franchise, which inevitably causes complications for creator Ice Cube's latest instalment, Last Friday. Cube responded to a fan asking if the film was still in the works or if John's passing has lead to its cancellation.
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"Are we still getting Friday or is that cancelled now because John Witherspoon passed?" the user asked, to which Ice Cube replied, "Back to the drawing board since New Line Cinema was slow on green lighting the LAST FRIDAY script that was full of Mr. Jones. I’ve been pissed off about it since Spoon passed away." The same fan responded to his tweet, saying "Yo can’t believe you replied been a fan since about five. Yeah John’s passing was very unfortunate for all of us. You can’t go with any other Parent companies like Columbia, Paramount? Or are you really trying to have it be a new line cinema thing?" Ice Cube clarified that "New Line has the rights to distribute that movie," which puts him in a bit of a bind. This is not the first time Cube has addressed the cause of the film's delay: he actually apologized to John and everyone in attendance at his celebration of life for New Line Cinema's failure to greenlight in time.
Cube was asked by TMZ about his tweets and whether he would consider using a CGI version of John in the film, but he was against the idea. "Nah, never," Cube responded. He then reiterates that the state of the film and rewriting of the script is "all on New Line."
