We're Finally Getting a New 'Scary Movie' a Decade After 'Scary Movie 5'

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Whassup? After a long stay in the grave, the Scary Movie franchise is rising from the dead. Deadline reports that Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Keenen Ivory Wayans, who wrote and directed the first two films in the horror-spoof franchise, are reviving the series at Paramount.

Scary Movie began as a spoof of 1990s slasher franchises like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, so with those films returning to theaters, it's only appropriate that Scary Movie should return as well. The film will be produced by Paramount and Miramax (which released the original films under their Dimension Films banner), with the three Wayans brothers returning to write the script. Said the Wayans in a statement: "We couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the new Scary Movie and work with each other again. This is a franchise we created more than 20 years ago. We remember people laughing in the aisles and hope to see that happen again. We look forward to working with Jonathan Glickman and his team at the new Miramax to bring these laughs to theaters, where they belong. It’s a double reunion." The film aims to begin shooting next year, and is intended for a theatrical release.

What Are the 'Scary Movie' Movies About?

Cindy (Anna Faris) on the phone while Ghostface stands behind her in Scary Movie

A spoof of the teen slasher movies of the 1990s, 2000's Scary Movie is largely a parody of the first Scream, as a masked killer picks off the student body of the local high school. On the case are Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris, in her breakout role) and Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall). Although the film's tagline was "No Mercy. No Shame. No Sequel.", Scary Movie 2 followed a year later, spoofing an array of supernatural horror films, including The Haunting, Stigmata, and What Lies Beneath. The Wayans-less Scary Movie 3 followed in 2003, with Airplane!'s David Zucker at the helm and a script co-written by a pre-Chernobyl Craig Mazin; it parodied M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, among other contemporary films. 2006's Scary Movie 4 retained the previous film's creative team, and took on War of the Worlds and The Grudge. The fifth and final installment of the franchise, Scary Movie 5, was helmed by The Best Man's Malcolm D. Lee, and did not bring back Faris and Hall, who'd starred in all four previous films. It featured Ashley Tisdale and Simon Rex in a parody of the Paranormal Activity franchise.

Although they were increasingly unpopular with critics - the first film has the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating of the series, with 51%, while Scary Movie 5 features a horrifying 4% - they were largely successful with audiences, earning nearly $900 million USD at the global box office. They also launched the careers of parody maestros Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who were credited as screenwriters on the first film after writing an early draft, and launched their own series of increasingly unsuccessful spoof movies.

The reboot of the Scary Movie series is in development, and is slated to shoot next year. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

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