Marlon Wayans ‘lost 20 lbs’ for ‘Scary Movie 6,’ teases ‘equal opportunity offenders’ (exclusive)

Marlon Wayans is getting back into Shorty shape.

After bulking up to play a professional footballer in horror movie Him (in theaters next week), Wayans teases his return for Scary Movie 6, the sequel to the horror-parody franchise. Part of that involves slimming down to portray his beloved character, Shorty.

“Physically, I like to endure some kind of crazy regimen,” Wayans tells Entertainment Weekly during a conversation about Him. “Even right now, it’s Scary Movie. I just lost 20 lbs busting my behind every day ’cause I didn’t wanna show up to set as Shorty buff at 225. That’d be lazy of me. I wanna do the work, I wanna look like Shorty. So when I’m able to [in his Shorty voice] have fun and s—, people are able to laugh at me, son.”

Scary Movie 6 was announced in April 2024, 11 years after the release of the fifth installment. It marks the first time the Wayans brothers — Marlon, Shawn, and Keenan Ivory — are reuniting in 18 years to write an original script, which Paramount says will be “the restart of the franchise.”

The Wayans and Rick Alvarez are writing and producing the sixth entry.

Wayans previously listed I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream, Heretic, Longlegs, Get Out, Nope, and Sinners as horror movies ripe for parody. But he also shares a little bit with EW about how he’s now going to poke fun at these premises in the age of elevated horror, of which Him is a great example.

“I think you have to acknowledge how comedy has changed. Not just horror has changed, but films have changed, the audience has changed, the world has shifted,” he explains. “I think the way to do that is to make the generational gap part of the conversation. That’s how we constructed the movie so we could talk about it all. It’s a conversation with these funny characters, and they just so happen to be going through this. The more pressure you put on characters and the more horrific the situations, that’s when you really get to know the characters.”

Scary Movie alums Regina Hall and Anna Faris are coming back to play Brenda and Cindy alongside Wayans as Shorty. “We have plans to bring a few more back,” Wayans teases, but he declines to say more because “no deal’s been done.”

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He does, however, promise a Scary Movie 6 that will be “no holds barred and equal opportunity offenders.”

“It’s how we always do it,” he says. “We just want to make everybody laugh, and we don’t care if you’re sensitive. Even sensitive people need to laugh at themselves.”

“Just know that we’re not just laughing at you, you get the chance to laugh at others,” he continues. “When we did White Chicks, we made fun of everybody. We made fun of Black people, we made fun of white people, we made fun of Hispanic people. That’s just what we do. We make fun of the world, make light of the world. It’s not to harm, it’s to bring humor. You may offend people here and there, but, hey, not every joke’s gonna land 100 percent, but if you tell a joke and 100 people laugh and one person walks out, that’s still a good joke.”

If 100 people walk out and only one person is laughing, “That’s a bad joke,” he adds. “That’s not to say that there’s not something in that joke ’cause this guy’s laughing now. We want to make the majority of people laugh and have a good time. I think this film that we’re working on is gonna be a great conversation piece, that we can all sit down and laugh together, over three generations of people who haven’t had great comedy in a long time.”

Scary Movie 6 is currently slated to be released in theaters on June 12, 2026.