Anna Faris’ career-defining role as Cindy Campbell in Scary Movie very nearly belonged to someone else — and the revelation is landing at the perfect moment, with Scary Movie 6 breaking franchise box office records this weekend.
In a recent Entertainment Tonight interview, Marlon Wayans disclosed that Melissa Joan Hart had originally been lined up to play the role that Faris made iconic, stunning both Faris and his brother Shawn Wayans with the revelation. The disclosure came after Faris asked the Wayans brothers whether any celebrity had desperately wanted a spot in the franchise only to get turned down.
It was Keenen Ivory Wayans, the director of the original 2000 film and one of the franchise’s co-architects, who changed course after seeing Faris audition. “Keenan was like, ‘I saw this young lady Anna Faris, and it really feels like that’s our Cindy,'” Marlon Wayans recalled. Hart, who at the time was widely known as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, never made the film.
Marlon Wayans treated the swap with characteristic irreverence, joking that Faris had committed “white on white crime” by taking the role. The story adds a fresh layer of mythology to a franchise that is very much back in the cultural conversation. Scary Movie 6 opened this weekend to $56 million domestically — the best debut in the franchise’s 26-year history, topping the $49.7 million opening of Scary Movie 3 in 2003.
The film reunites Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Damon Wayans Jr., Faris, and Regina Hall, with Keenen Ivory Wayans returning as a co-writer for the first time since Scary Movie 2. The new installment spoofs a run of recent horror hits including Get Out, Sinners, M3GAN, and Longlegs.
Critics have been more measured than audiences. The film holds a 32 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 37 on Metacritic, with several reviewers taking aim at its comedy. One review noted that the opening sequence — featuring an award-wielding Teyana Taylor as a heightened version of herself — showed genuine promise, but that the film struggled to sustain that energy across its 96-minute runtime.
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None of that appears to be slowing audiences down. The numbers suggest nostalgia for the original cast, combined with a fresh batch of horror targets, is a formula that still works — with or without Sabrina.
