Is Offensive Comedy Making A Comeback? Marlon Wayans Promises ‘Scary Movie’ Resurgence Will “Cancel Cancel-Culture”

Looks like comedy’s back on the menu, boys. That’s what actor, comedian, and Scary Movie alum Marlon Wayans teases with the return of the titular franchise’s sixth installment. Despite being the sixth film, which Marlon has dubbed a “rebooquel,” something of a reboot sequel hybrid, it’s been a hot minute both for the franchise and its central stars. The last entry, Scary Movie 5, was the first attempt to ditch the cast that made the franchise famous for a new cast of characters, bombing with a 3.6 IMDb rating and stopping the spoofing empire dead in its tracks for thirteen years.

Scary Movie was originally something of a Wayans family project. The first two films were  directed and co-written by Keenen Ivory Wayans, while Shawn and Marlon Wayans were co-writers and actors in the main cast. However, due to creative differences with executive producer and Dimension Films founder Bob Weinstein, brother of Harvey Weinstein, the Wayans exited the franchise after the series’ second installment in 2001. Though Anna Faris and Regina Hall stuck it out for another two films, Scary Movie 6 sees the return of the original gang all together for the first time in 25 years.

“We Baaack”

Marlon tells Entertainment Weekly it felt like the right time for a reunion, citing “the dismantling of the Weinstein regime,” the encouragement of his late father, who passed in 2023 and wanted the brothers to work together again, and God, who reportedly told him, “this is what you should be doing.” Besides the Weinstein barrier long gone and the great chance to work creatively with family again, Marlon also feels like the world “needs a big-ass laugh” right now. Perhaps it's Marlon himself who needed to laugh the most, though, having suffered from depression after reportedly losing nearly 60 loved ones in three years, including his parents. 

“What we're trying to do is bring back laughter,” Marlon tells Ryan Coleman of EW. “This is about bringing back comedy the way it used to be. And I think the only way to do it is you have to cancel the cancel culture.” The recently released first trailer for the pastiche horror spoof gets a modern update to reflect the times, with plenty of new satirical targets: M3GAN, Weapons, Heart Eyes, Sinners, Longlegs, as well as Get Out, The Terrifier, The Substance, and Smile. But don’t worry: the series’ guiding horror template, Scream—first shopped around under the speculative title Scary Movie—which has functioned as the franchise’s parodic North Star, hasn’t gone anywhere. 

“This is about bringing back comedy the way it used to be."

The film opens with an allusion to Scream VI, which transplanted the franchise’s suburban formula out of the ’burbs and into the Big Apple, materializing as the source of most New Yorkers’ own sense of horror: the subway. Besides modern film references, which have notably taken a turn for the critically acclaimed rather than lowbrow slasher targets, which probably accurately reflects the evolution of the horror genre over the past 25 years, it also takes aim at the modern social zeitgeist. 

The trailer features an on-the-nose joke about pronouns after a woman on the Subway gets stabbed and objects to another passenger’s declaration that someone stabbed her. “Not her!” the victim objects. “My pronouns are they/them. He stabbed them!" With “Without Me” by Eminem permeating the background, trailer text boldly proclaiming “there are no safe spaces,” and Marlon Wayans declaring into the camera, “we baaaack,” it looks like Scary Movie is proudly self-mythologizing its return. 

“‘Cause we need a little controversy, ’cause it feels so empty without me,” the lyrics blare in the background like a trumpet announcing a new golden age of comedic freedom, taking aim not only at pronouns and residual “this black guy being gay is hysterical” premises, but at racial discourse too. Cindy and Brenda reunite, with an apprehensive Cindy warning her when she asks for a hug, “I really want to, but I’m a Republican now, so I’m supposed to be racist.” Brenda reassures her, “Oh, girl, I think all white people are racist anyway. Come here!” The trailer closes on a note of a black woman speaking in a stereotypical manner that feels illegal.

"We're gonna make fun of everybody because we're equal opportunity offenders."

On X, the trailer and Wayans' comments about “canceling cancel culture” circulated with new and old generations reacting with mixed reception. Some predicted cynically, “Oh, this is going to be one of the worst movies ever made, isn’t it?” while others expressed gender pronoun joke fatigue. Despite critics calling the trailer “about as funny as childhood cancer,” there nevertheless seems to be renewed excitement for the franchise’s potential. If not in keeping Scary Movie relevant in the 2020s, then in providing the solace that comedy as a genre used to provide to audiences: comforting escapism.

Whether it’s nostalgia or longing for the old days of offensive comedy, the trailer racked up over 100 million views in less than 24 hours. If the golden age of Scary Movie is what you're missing, Marlon promises to deliver. "We're gonna do what we always do. We're gonna make fun of everybody because we're equal opportunity offenders,” Marlon tells EW.

Marlon Wayans on Offensive Comedy’s Therapeutic Utility

Discussing how comedy, especially comedy unrestrained by tone-policing, free to get dark, real, and hyperbolic, rescued him from depression, Marlon told The New York Times in 2024, “I rescued myself from depression by learning to laugh in my worst circumstances. Losing my parents broke me, and I’m telling the audience: Here’s how you survive this: find humor in everything.” In the interview, a new Scary Movie had just been announced, and the Wayans were not yet involved. Asked whether the news irritated him, Marlon replied, “No. If they want to waste $50 million, go for it,” warning that the franchise’s magic is a family recipe that can’t be replicated by just anybody.

While some have insisted on playing purposefully obtuse when it comes to positioning the return of these sorts of movies and this style of irreverent comedy as something that “never went away,” I urge you to read this NYT interview, whose entire premise is discussing the Wayans’ offensive comedy shtick. The interviewer, David Marchese, manages to come off as the most uptight stick in the mud imaginable, draining the fun and humor out of every lighthearted quip Marlon drops to the point of exhaustion. With cultural gatekeepers like this, it’s a miracle we could ever get something like a new Scary Movie made. Thankfully, due to the political vibe shift forcing the left’s hand, they seem to know they have to ease up on the omnipresent wokescolding that made their cultural reign feel oppressive enough to help usher Donald Trump into a second term as president.

While the interviewer is comfortable joking about Marlon’s own parents’ deaths to his face with comments like, “So the key to self-improvement is simple: Have your parents die,” he’s far less comfortable discussing dark comedy as a form of expression when it comes to jokes about identity. Suddenly, Marchese shrivels up his own ass, transmuting into a badgering hall monitor who polices each joke’s subject matter, from Magic Johnson to the Weinsteins to gender identity to praise of comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, with increasing sanctimoniousness. 

That’s despite Marlon’s own experiences with these subjects. He’s lost family members to AIDS, his own child is transgender, and he claims he was personally strong-armed out of his own franchise by the “evil Weinstein regime,” which he says is precisely why the jokes resonate—because they’re personal. “When I talk about Bob and Harvey, and I say that, it’s because there’s damage there. Because we have been victims,” he says, providing context for his flippant joke that the Weinsteins “raped everybody,” as in screwed them over.

The tone policing was so incessant that Marlon stopped a beat to remark, “Damn, Dave, you sensitive! [Laughs.] I’m going to take you to a Ricky Gervais show and a Dave Chappelle show, and I’m just going to sit next to you and watch when you go, “Oh, God.”” At one point, Marchese asks him to continue the joke he could tell he was leading into, but omits it in transcription, saying “[Wayans tells a joke about the Weinstein brothers that we can’t publish]” apparently even if it's in quotes. Marlon starts giving Marchese grief by telling him that when he and his brother would get reactions like that, they'd call it "getting on a whitey bike" because brothers would crack up at that, but white people would respond by saying, "Oh, I don't know about that" and start pedaling backward. 

Despite this anti-comedy culture that has reigned for what feels like an oppressively long time, a sense of optimism still permeates.

When Marchese isn’t being a tone-policing buzzkill, he’s a fun-sucker in other ways, like pedantically fact-checking Marlon’s jokes. Remarking on his material about Magic Johnson, he objects, “By the way, he has H.I.V., not AIDS.” He also goes to great lengths to reassure the public that Magic Johnson did not actually have sex with a monkey, as suggested in a bit Marlon tells that in no way seriously makes that claim. Marlon, with the patience of a saint, simply explains to Marchese that comedy is uninterested in 100 percent accuracy. “You can’t be super on point with the facts when you’re telling jokes. Sometimes you just tell the jokes, man.” 

After informing Marchese that he’s had friends and relatives die of AIDS, as if you have to present a résumé of personal experience before you’re permitted to tell certain jokes, he maintains a healthy perspective about it all: “Part of that joke is finding humor in things that happen. It’s a different way to look at something tragic.” Marlon then expresses concern that the world has forgotten how to laugh and is grooming people to be overly sensitive. Despite this anti-comedy culture that has reigned for what feels like an oppressively long time, a sense of optimism still permeates. “People want to laugh,” he declares, drawing on his recent experiences in comedy clubs, where the dark jokes are getting chuckles again. 

The Comedy Genre Died a Long Time Ago. Is It Back From the Dead?

Most of us have noticed that the comedy genre seems to have outright disappeared from the big screen. This awareness of the big blockbuster comedy’s decline began appearing in thinkpieces in the 2010s, with The Atlantic publishing “Hollywood Is Giving Up on Comedy” in 2014, and it persists today. What virtually all of these pieces have in common is their observations of shifting cinematic interest away from comedy-first slapstick films, where funny people just kind of fumble around in absurd or hilarious situations, towards a premise-first formula, with comedic elements infused inside. 

GQ recently wrote about the sudden decline of comedy in the mid-2010s, "when films that were outwardly comedy-first—not merely quippy superhero movies with comedic elements, or genre flicks with balancing hints of levity—seemed to just dry up." While cinema has declined as a whole, people remain interested in existing IP, and there’s also a renewed interest in horror, which has done very well for itself in recent years. People seem drawn to these unique premises of multiverses or creepy, sinister concepts as opposed to watching laymen say funny stuff back and forth. 

When comedies do succeed, it seems largely to do with existing IP carrying a lot of its water. David Marchese, of the NYT, has observed that it seems like comedy in both standup and film now needs to be about something in addition to being funny. In the comedy golden age, the premise was incidental to the humor that arose from the direction, writing, and performers. Marlon Wayans agrees, noting that for the past ten years, there haven't been many comedies, owing to Hollywood "chasing the superhero" or "chasing the blockbuster." He has hope that things are going to change, though, "everything is cyclical." The problem, he argues, is that it has to be done by people who know how to make the comedies, not people who see the success of something and try to profit off that formula without living in the comedy themselves. 

Big Think put out a piece on why comedies rarely make it to theaters today, instead going straight to streaming platforms, a fact so legible that the marketing for comedies like The Naked Gun is now employing satirical PSAs about saving comedies by buying a ticket with the somber tone of sponsoring a child overseas. They attribute it to foreign markets, which prefer universal dramas over culturally specific comedies; the infusion of comedic elements into other genres, like Marvel's action blockbusters, which make for safer investments; and, of course, the elephant in the room: our more politically correct culture. 

Comedy is supposed to be escapism.

While the Overton window of permissible material has shrunk compared to the early 2000s, it’s also changed what comedy looks like. Comedy is more moralistic and political than ever, with stand-up often revolving around topical political and social issues. It’s not only polarizing, but a bit of a buzzkill. Comedy is supposed to be escapism. Letting your hair down. Not a lecture on what and how to think.

Director Josh Greenbaum told GQ, "I think it's fair to say that the classic mid-budget, theatrical studio comedy has become harder and harder to find." He attributes this to a few factors: the rise of streamers, more accessible home theaters, and social media, which together have reshaped audience behavior. Studios, meanwhile, stopped backing comedies because they're much riskier than other genres, in an era when studios rely on foreign markets that themselves prefer universal dramas. “Comedy doesn’t always translate internationally, which matters more than ever in the global marketplace. And it’s incredibly subjective—what’s hilarious to one person falls flat for another. So when studios are chasing billion-dollar tentpoles, rolling the dice on a $40 million original comedy feels riskier,” Greenbaum explained.

The Winds of Change

These takes, while totally on the money as reflective analyses of the past ten to fifteen years, I think, are coming to an end. Trend forecaster Sean Monahan, who spoke to The Cut and predicted the vibe shift in 2022, said he believed the interest in opulence and transgression is in some ways “just pent-up frustrations from the pandemic where people are like, I want to have fun.” He added that it makes sense that, the 2010s being such a politicized decade, people would want to be less constrained by political considerations.

It’s early days, but even GQ writing about where all the big-screen comedies have gone as recently as August 2025 hints at signs of change. Independent, low-budget, original ideas are gaining some traction in cinema, while the success of big franchises is starting to wane. Nostalgia is certainly in right now, hence why we’re still making Scream and Scary Movie entries, but it seems to go deeper than just adding a number to these franchises. 

In 2023, a comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence titled No Hard Feelings premiered in cinemas. It was marketed as a raunchy comedy about a 32-year-old woman hired by wealthy parents to seduce their socially awkward 19-year-old son before he goes to college, or as the IMDb description tells it, “She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.” This sort of movie felt so out of place in its time; many remarked that it felt like something that could only be made in the early 2000s. Some criticized it as regressive for its American Pie-esque handling of sexuality, masculinity, and age gaps, but more people seemed pleasantly surprised. Vogue even ran an op-ed asking why more people aren't acknowledging "how wildly problematic" the film is, as if to say, “Wait, why isn’t anyone permanently outraged anymore?”

Performers have burnt out on the moral guidance of the audience, instead letting the paycheck and demand talk. 

Over the years, comedians have criticized PC culture for suffocating comedy, with Jerry Seinfeld being one of the most vocal critics. In 2024, he was yet again railing against the extreme left and blamed them for killing TV comedy, but he also said that comedy fans are now going to see stand-up comics. He told The New Yorker it’s because "We are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us,” adding that you get real-time feedback that lets you know when you’re off track so you can course correct immediately. He contrasted that with what it’s like to work in writer’s rooms these days, where “a script goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—’Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy.” 

That same year, The Hollywood Reporter backed Seinfeld's claim that there was a real boom in the live comedy circuit, citing a study that came out of the pandemic, which found a 127% increase in comedy touring from 2019 to 2022. There were also more stand-up specials finding distribution than in recent years. As of 2024, "Netflix alone has aired more than 350 comedy specials in the past 10 years." 

In December, the problematic three, Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais, and Matt Rife, all released comedy specials on Netflix within the same month. A series of the world’s most famous comedians, some previously canceled, decided to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, prompting much public backlash. Bill Burr defended his decision to perform and called his critics “sanctimonious cunts.” Whether ethical or not, it indicates a shift: performers have burnt out on the moral guidance of the audience, instead letting the paycheck and demand talk. 

Wokeness has been beaten into submission, and it’s the gatekeepers who are now, ironically, reopening the gates.

In the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion of comedians and anti-PC podcasters like Shane Gillis, Tim Dillon, and Theo Von, who have taken the comedy world by storm. Louis C.K. is selling out shows again. Aziz Ansari, previously unfairly #MeToo'd over what many viewed as a transparently awkward date, made his directorial debut last year. Even the painful-stunts-as-comedy franchise Jackass has announced its fifth and final installment, slated for release in June. It’s no coincidence all of this is happening now. People are freely saying the r-word again. Shane Gillis, who was fired from Saturday Night Live in 2019 over resurfaced “racist and homophobic” tweets, has since hosted the show twice. Wokeness has been beaten into submission, and it’s the gatekeepers who are now, ironically, reopening the gates.

There’s clearly a comedy revival underway for those who want it. The muzzles are coming off, the rules are loosening, and the only thing left now is to fill the seats, provide the streams, and deliver the clicks. It may be too early to say for certain, but it’s starting to look like we are so back. The cultural environment for expression feels freer than it has in a long while. Even if Scary Movie 6 ends up sucking, the fact that it’s being made at all, that studios are willing to give this kind of comedy another shot, offers a sense of hope and relief about the direction things are heading. It’s not everything, but it’s a positive signal.