Back in 2000, a low budget comedy movie turned the horror genre on its head, twisted it around, and turned it inside out, spawning not only a long-running franchise but an entire movement of similar movies that ripped into several genres across the following decade. Taking much of its inspiration from the Scream franchise and adding in the sensibility of The Naked Gun – albeit a cruder, ruder version – Marlon and Shawn Wayans starred alongside Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and Dave Sheridan to bring back the type of ridiculous comedy that had been missing from cinemas for almost a decade. That allowed Scary Movie to really strike a chord with audiences, turning the film’s $19 million budget into a massive $278 million box office and immediately getting the sequel greenlit. Flash forward to 2026, and the sixth entry in the franchise became a legacy sequel that somehow defied all the odds to be another huge box office win for the franchise that died of exhaustion in 2013. Now, it is a massive streaming hit to boot, proving you can’t keep a good parody franchise down.
Scary Movie 6 – released simply as Scary Movie – hit cinemas in June, with the original movie’s five stars returning along with plenty of newcomers including Kenan Thompson, Damon Wayans Jr., Kim Wayans, and SNL‘s Heidi Gardner. The movie benefitted from having Waylon and Shawn Wayan being joined by brother Kennan Ivory Wayans for the first time since Scary Movie 2 to write the script, even if it didn’t help with the reviews of critics, who mostly hated the final result. Yet, that is often irrelevant when audiences decide that the pull of nostalgia is worth more than any professional opinion, and the 23% Rotten Tomatoes score was mostly ignored as the film became the second-highest grossing of the franchise. Several months later, Scary Movie is now a huge #1 hit on Paramount+.
The Scary Movie franchise released three movies in quick succession between 2000 and 2003, with a fourth movie following in 2006, and then the fifth not coming until 2013. Even with a break of seven years, Scary Movie 5 was a box office success but only took $78 million, a huge drop compared to previous movies. Seemingly out of new ideas and movies to parody, the franchise appeared to be over. Yet, this year the sixth installment quickly saw its ticket sales soar, turning it from a panned potential disaster into box office gold. The film ended its run on a $232 million haul, the second-highest of the franchise sitting just above 2003’s Scary Movie 3 and not too far off the $278 million of the original film. Part of the reason for the movie’s success came down the driving sense of nostalgia that can pull audiences into cinemas so they can relive their own memories of movies gone by, but its 13 year break was also anything but unlucky as it opened up plenty of new movies to be ripped apart.
Horror movies have been on the rise in the last five years, with many low-budget films going on to surpass even blockbuster event movies in cinemas. That is why there could not have been a better time for the Scary Movie franchise to rise from the dead and play many of those recent movies for laughs. Get Out, Smile, Longlegs, Terrifier, M3GAN, It Follows, and The Substance all came in for a brutal ribbing as part of the Wayan’s script, which also tapped into current prominent talking points like cancel culture and diversity initiatives. Audiences were not entirely convinced by the movie’s long-awaited return, but the 63% Popcornmeter score was enough to avoid a “rotten” rating and the impressive box office result would certainly take the edge off. Not, the Scary Movie franchise is dominating streaming in a new wave of interest around Halloween. Could we see a seventh Scary Movie soon? It would be foolish to rule it out.
Should there be another Scary Movie sequel, or has the franchise run its course? Let us know what you think in the comments.
