Over his decades in entertainment, “Scary Movie” creator and star Marlon Wayans has confronted the same prejudices: Hollywood is convinced that international audiences won’t show up for comedies or films starring Black actors.
“We’re trying to erase that old-school stigma,” says Wayans, who returned — along with several of his brothers — to the horror parody franchise after a 25-year absence. So when he was gearing up to promote “Scary Movie,” the sixth installment in the long-running series, Wayans left nothing to chance. “I told the marketing team at Paramount, ‘Fucking put me on a plane. Send me everywhere.’ Because I’m one of those old-school salesmen. Everyone wants to laugh.”
Wayans put his passport to good use, flying to London, Paris and Mexico City ahead of the film’s opening weekend in early June. Paramount didn’t just lean on the charisma of Wayans and his brother Shawn, as well as their co-stars Regina Hall and Anna Faris. The studio hired local comedy writers and script adapters to restructure certain jokes and insert slang and cultural references so the humor in the movie was funny to more than just Americas. Paramount executives also tailored the marketing to specific territories, such as a racy Vegemite-inspired poster in Australia.
“We tried to get in on their jokes, as opposed to expecting them to always meet us,” says Josh Goldstine, Paramount’s worldwide marketing president.
The hustle paid off. The “rebootquel,” a referential joke in the film about Hollywood’s obsession with reboots and sequels, shattered the franchise’s opening records by debuting at the international box office with $50.5 million from 53 overseas markets. Those returns were 75% above 2003’s “Scary Movie 3,” the previous foreign benchmark holder in the 26-year-old series.
“Scary Movie” had a similar debut in North America, scoring a series-best $54 million. The film has since generated $173 million globally, including $84.5 million domestically and $88 million overseas. Produced by Miramax for $30 million, the sixth “Scary Movie” is already enjoying bloody-good profit margins.
The enthusiastic reception around the world is notable because funny movies tend to earn more domestically. Historically, that hasn’t been true for the “Scary Movie” films, which saw ticket sales evenly split between foreign and stateside crowds for the five prior installments. But executives were concerned that wouldn’t be the case for the most recent entry, because the international box office has been challenged across all genres since COVID.
With that in mind, Paramount worked with the filmmakers not just on the promotional materials but the film itself to extend the popularity beyond the U.S. Those efforts went beyond dubbing audio in different languages to include adapting jokes and other details in the script. Such market-specific attention is more common in animation but less so for live-action films, because of the extra creative lift required.
“It takes a little more time,” says Goldstine, “a little more sweat equity.”
“Scary Movie,” a property that thrives on the taboo, had no shortage of scary movies to spoof in the decade-plus since the prior installment, 2013’s “Scary Movie 5.” Targets in this installment included “Get Out,” “Scream,” “Ma” and “The Substance,” as well as pop culture hits like “Kpop Demon Hunters” and the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael.” The story follows the original foursome — Cindy, Ray, Shorty and Brenda — reuniting when the same masked serial killer from the first film resurfaces.
Light gags, nothing central to the plot, were tweaked in certain markets. In Brazil, for example, a reference to a U.S. serial killer was updated to refer to one who was familiar to Brazilian audiences. In Mexico, a throwaway line was rewritten around a viral TikTok from a woman in Yucatán, while another joke was reworked as an “albur,” a Mexican Spanish term for a double entendre.
“Everyone laughs at a fart joke, but comedy tends to be referential to culture,” Goldstine says. “The job of movies these days is to pierce the zeitgeist of culture, so it was really about understanding what’s in the zeitgeist of each country.”
Paramount also adapted promos for specific markets. In the United Kingdom, a social media influencer known as Bus Auntie linked up with Marlon’s character Shorty and Ghostface (yes, the masked killer from “Scream” appears in this franchise). On a stop in Mexico, Faris danced with nuns from “The Conjuring,” a hugely popular film franchise across Latin America.
Since COVID and the 2023 labor strikes, the overseas box office has been inconsistent in terms of embracing Hollywood fare. Asian markets like China developed a preference for homegrown content.
“‘Scary Movie’ almost became a local comedy because we were referencing things in their culture,” says Mark Viane, Paramount’s international distribution chief. “That’s what made it stick.”
Viane gives credit to the Wayans, who weren’t too precious with their script: “They challenged us by saying, ‘Let’s cross every line there is, and let’s cross it locally in each territory.'”