Ice Cube said he is looking to retain the rights to the Friday film franchise.

The 53-year-old rapper-actor, appearing on the podcast Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, said that he has been speaking with Warner Bros. about the rights to the film franchise that he wrote, which includes 1995’s Friday, 2000’s Next Friday and 2002’s Friday After Next.

‘I don’t know; Warner Brothers is weird right now,’ said the entertainer, who made headlines last month saying not getting vaccinated cost him a $9 million role. ‘I don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know what they’re doing.’

The latest: Ice Cube, 53, said he is looking to retain the rights to the Friday film franchise.

The Los Angeles native said he and his team would ‘love to have it back,’ and that he’s optimistic things will flourish in time.

‘I think it’s gonna be close to a time when we can get it back,’ said Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson. ‘So we’ll either wait for that time, or we’ll keep trying to convince them that they need to let us control the movie. It’s my movie, but they have distribution control.’

Ice Cube told Tyson that he would not be open to buying the rights to the film series.

‘I ain’t putting s*** up for it – f*** no,’ he said. ‘They need to give it to me, and they’re gonna make money.’

The Los Angeles native said he and his team would ‘love to have it back,’ and that he’s optimistic things will flourish in time

The entertainer chat with Mike Tyson and Matt Barnes on the podcast

The boxing champ asked Ice Cube about the future of the film franchise

He said it would be ‘stupid’ to pay for his ‘own stuff,’ adding, ‘They need to do the right thing, get it to us, let us turn it into more money and make the fans happy, and people will have a good time with the series – we can do a lot with it.’

Ice Cube told Tyson he has penned a pair of screenplays for a Friday sequel – one of which was rejected by Warner Bros. because ‘the timing wasn’t right,’ with the second being stuck ‘in development hell.’

He added: ‘They just kept giving you note after note after note, never giving you the green light.’

The popular comedy franchise was in the headlines last year after Chris Tucker, who costarred in the original movie, opened up on why he didn’t appear in the sequels.

Ice Cube told Tyson that he would not be open to buying the rights to the film series

The original film in the series starred Chris Tucker and Ice Cube

‘One of the reasons why I didn’t do the second one was because of the weed,’ Tucker told All Urban Central in 2021. ‘Because I said, man, that movie became a phenomenon. I don’t want everybody smoking weed – and I never really told people this because I kind of forgot about it, but it was one of the reasons why I didn’t do it.

‘Because I said, “I don’t wanna represent everybody smoking weed.” And that’s one of the reasons why I said, “Nah.” I didn’t wanna keep doing that character. It probably was good for me because it kept me moving to the next phase and next movies.’

Ice Cube subsequently took to Twitter in December of 2021 and added, ‘We were ready to pay Chris Tucker $10-12m to do Next Friday but he turned us down for religious reasons. He didn’t want to cuss or smoke weed on camera anymore.’