Marlon Wayans Blasts the Weinsteins for Stealing His ‘Scary Movie 3’ Ideas

While there is certainly no shortage of reasons to hate Harvey and Bob Weinstein, you can add “the way they treated the Wayans family” to the staggeringly long list. 

It’s easy to forget just how wildly popular the first entry in the long-running Scary Movie franchise was. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2000’s Scary Movie made a whopping $278 million at the worldwide box office. To put that in perspective, Scream, the movie it was directly parodying, only made $173 million. And the Wayans’ Scary Movie 2 was also a big hit, even without that cameo from Marlon Brandon. 

Despite these achievements, Ivory Wayans, as well as his brothers and co-writers Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans, weren’t a part of Scary Movie 3. Why? Marlon has previously bemoaned the “evil” and “disrespectful” Weinsteins, whose company produced the Scary Movie films. Now he’s provided even more details about what happened while guesting on former NFL player Shannon Sharpe’s podcast Club Shay Shay.

According to Marlon, the Weinsteins “took the franchise from us.” The brothers understandably asked for a bigger paycheck following the success of the first two movies. After presenting their pitch to the studio for Scary Movie 3, “They go, ‘We love it. We’re going to make an offer,’” Marlon recalled. But the Weinsteins’ offer was “what we made on the first one.”

The Wayans obviously passed, but then the studio went ahead and made Scary Movie 3 without them. And Marlon claims that the studio “stole the idea for the third one. (They) took the idea we pitched them.” 

While Marlon didn’t say exactly what was in the pitch, David Zucker, who ended up directing Scary Movie 3, admitted to GQ that when he was hired by Bob Weinstein, the executive told him: “We want to base (the movie) on Signs and The Ring. You’ve seen those, right?” 

Screenwriter Craig Mazin also recalled that Scary Movie 3 was rushed through specifically to get ahead of the Wayans. “I think the Wayans are going to come up with another parody movie,” Weinstein told Mazin. “I need to have Scary Movie 3 out before them.” As for the falling out between Wayans and the Weinsteins, Mazin admitted that his predecessors were likely being screwed: “I have no doubt the Wayans were absolutely in the right, just knowing Bob.”

Marlon did make another horror parody, 2013’s A Haunted House. But as he told Sharpe, while was looking for distribution, he ended up showing it to the Weinsteins who tried to “buy it and shelve it,” then “take the ideas that I had in A Haunted House and apply them to Scary Movie 5.”  

“Sometimes they get mad that a Black man has the nerve to ask for what his money is supposed to be. Don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to make. This is what my value is. And if you want that, then you gonna have to pay me what I’m worth,” Marlon concluded. 

“Now your brother’s in jail, and you ain’t in the business,” Marlon said of Bob Weinsten. 

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