A Haunted House was far from a critical success – the film has a meager 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – but the low-budget horror parody was a runaway success at the box office, raking in nearly $60 million worldwide. It didn’t take long for Open Road Films to greenlight a sequel, and just over a year after the first film’s release, A Haunted House 2 is hoping to recapture some of that same success.
Writer and producer Marlon Wayans has spent the past few weeks touring the country, offering advance screenings and Q&A events to help generate plenty of hype for the sequel. During a recent stop in Phoenix, we had the opportunity to join a few other journalists for a roundtable discussion with the actor. Here are some of the highlights.
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A Haunted House was made for less than $2 million, and went on to gross nearly $60 million at the box office. Critics haven’t always been kind to your movies…
I haven’t gotten one good review since Requiem. [laughs]
But there’s no denying that you can make money at the box office. Do you let the reviews bother you?
I just go out and do my thing. And no disrespect to critics, I respect what they do. There’s a certain kind of movie that you make that’s critic-friendly. Comedy is a tough one, especially when they’re goofy, when they’re silly, when they’re scatalogical humor and a lot of sexual [humor].
Comedy is subjective. I make movies for an audience, and I think for critics to really judge one of my movies, I think they should go to a theater and I think they should sit in the back, and they should watch it with a group of people that I made the movie for. But with that said, I still respect their opinion, and some of them are actually quite funny. I started collecting some, and I’m gonna make a collage of all the bad reviews. [laughs]
My kids often go “dad, your movies are so funny, why did this one only get half a star?” [laughs] I don’t know, baby girl. “It was a four to me.” You’re my daughter, it’s supposed to be a four. It better be, these apparently bad movies pay your private school bills. [laughs]
I think you have to have fun with. I hold no malice in my heart at this point in my career. I understand that everybody has their position, everybody has their job to do, and those things help shape me. It’s all designed to make you better, you’ve just gotta listen.
What were some of your favorite scary movies when you were growing up?
Nightmare on Elm Street. The thought of a guy killing you in your dreams scared the shit out of me. I wouldn’t sleep! I was like eight years old, drinking coffee and [taking] NoDoz. I was scared to death. [As far as recent films], The Conjuring was scary. That’s why I layered it into the movie, because it was good. I tweeted about The Conjuring like seven times, I kept tweeting “you have to see this movie.”
It was scary, and that doll creeped me out so much that I instantly went to my safe haven, which is, I’ve gotta tell a joke. When I get scared or sad, I start thinking I’ve gotta tell a joke. So immediately I went, what’s funny about this? Well, what if that doll was a stalker? And then we thought about [A Haunted House] where Malcolm was with the stuffed animals, and we thought, what if he did a doll this time, and it follows him around?
Have you ever experienced any paranormal encounters of your own?
No, I guess that’s why I keep doing [these movies], until a demon tells me “stop writing that shit.” I wish I did, I want a paranormal encounter. I want to know there’s life after death.
You’ve written a number of successful comedies. What’s your writing process like?
I don’t know, man, it just hits you. I get it from all kinds of places. Sometimes it’s just like a magazine article. My brother was looking at a magazine article about Paris and Nicki Hilton, and I said “yo, we should play them.” He said “what did you smoke, and how much of it?” [laughs]
This franchise came out of [the fact that] Hollywood stopped making a lot of African-American movies, and they weren’t putting that many black stars in movies. And I was just like alright, I wanna create something that I can do low-budget, out-of-pocket, and just bring something to the studio system to be distributed. I wanna take a chance.
So I started watching Paranormal Activity, and I was like “boy, white people do some dumb stuff in these movies.” [laughs] And then I was like “what if this was a black couple? What if Paranormal Activity happened to a black couple?” I called my producing partner Rick, and he came over, and within five hours we knew we had a movie.
Not many people may be aware of this, but you were signed on to play Robin in a third Tim Burton Batman film. Burton was replaced by Joel Schumacher, who then replaced you and went on to create the two worst incarnations of Batman in history.
Yes.
What can you tell us about that experience? Did you get to try on the suit?
I never got try on the Robin suit, but I met with Joel Schumacher. He looked at me and was like “hmm-mm.” [laughs] I think they didn’t want me to play Robin because they thought I was gonna upstage Batman. My bulge would be way bigger than Batman’s. [laughs] So that’s my take.
Every director has to be able to make his choice and do his version of a movie, so I respect it. I don’t get upset, I heal quick. Same thing happened with G.I. Joe, same thing may be happening with [the Richard Pryor biopic]. New director, it changes up. I know that instead of sitting around thinking about what I didn’t get, I wanna be busy writing what I can get.
That would have been amazing, but I know God did that for a reason. If I’d been Robin, and I had blown up that young, at 19 or 20 years old, do you know what kind of trouble I would’ve gotten into? By the time 20 more years had passed, I would’ve looked like Flavor Flav, that’s how crazy it would’ve been. [laughs]
God knows who to give money to and when to give it to them. For me, success is hitting me at an age where I really feel responsible enough to handle it. I know what the workload is, I understand the responsibilities. I know I’m ripe for it now.
You mentioned the Richard Pryor film. That’s been in flux for awhile, and a lot of people say that your screen test was phenomenal. Will we ever get a chance to see it?
It’s not an impression, because it’s not so much about doing Pryor and sounding like Pryor, as it is feeling [like Pryor], and bringing those emotions and finding those vulnerabilities in his character and making you love the guy, although he was out of his mind in a lot of ways. He’s a dark dude, but he’s brilliant, and there’s a soft spot to him. So it was finding those things that make him loveable and allowing people to see far beyond the great comedian that he was, far beyond his boisterous personality onstage. He did stand-up to heal himself, in a lot of ways, and the minute he left the stage he was dying.
It was a great experience, and [director] Bill Condon was amazing, and the excitement that we shared on that was great. I know it’s Lee Daniels now, and if it’s Lee I think we’d have an amazing time and put together an amazing movie. I’ve been doing stand-up for three and a half years only to prepare, to build the skill set to do this role. But somewhere along the line, I got bit by the bug, and now I love stand-up. I started out wanting to play a great, and now I wanna be a great.
So if Pryor happens, it’s beautiful. But if it doesn’t happen, God knows what he’s doing. He knows maybe I’m not ready for it, and I’d look like Flavor Flav in ten years.
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A Haunted House 2 opens Friday, April 18 in theaters everywhere.