Every ‘Scary Movie’ Film in Order and Why the Franchise Still Has Unfinished Business
The ‘Scary Movie’ franchise has always operated on a simple but devastatingly effective premise: take whatever horror is dominating multiplexes, point at it aggressively, and see how many people show up to laugh. Created by Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Marlon Wayans, the series gained massive popularity by lampooning the slasher and supernatural horror films that dominated the late 1990s and early 2000s. More than two decades later, that formula is being dusted off for a sixth time, and the timing might be exactly right.
Over the course of its run, the franchise has grossed nearly $900 million worldwide. That is not an accident. These films tapped into something real about how audiences relate to horror, which is that the genre is never more than one well-placed joke away from collapsing into absurdity, and the Wayans family knew it before almost anyone else did.
‘Scary Movie’ Films in Order at a Glance
There are currently six ‘Scary Movie’ films and you can find them in chronological order below:
- Scary Movie (2000)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001)
- Scary Movie 3 (2003)
- Scary Movie 4 (2006)
- Scary Movie 5 (2013)
- Scary Movie (2026)
The ‘Scary Movie’ Franchise in Order: How It All Began
The original film centered around a group of high school students, including Cindy, who is a spoof of ‘Scream’s’ Sidney, who are stalked by a masked killer. The main influence for the original film was ‘Scream,’ but it also spoofed classics like ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ ‘The Sixth Sense,’ and ‘Halloween.’ The result was a genuine cultural event rather than just a parody film.
The first film still ranks as the highest-grossing installment in the franchise, with a $278 million global haul. That figure is remarkable for a comedy with a relatively modest budget, and it set expectations that the sequels would spend the rest of the decade struggling to meet.
‘Scary Movie 2‘ got spoof material from supernatural classics like ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Amityville Horror,’ as well as contemporary hits like ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘What Lies Beneath.’ Even more preoccupied with toilet humor than its predecessor, ‘Scary Movie 2’ hauled in substantially less at the box office. The drop-off was steep enough to prompt major creative changes, but the franchise was far from finished.
The Wayans Exit and the Creative Shift
As the Wayans family departed the franchise, the studio brought on another group of established spoof veterans. Between them, David Zucker and Pat Proft had ‘Airplane!’, ‘Top Secret!’, and the ‘Naked Gun’ and ‘Hot Shots!’ series under their belts. Their entry point was well-timed, as a new wave of American J-horror remakes gave the series plenty of fresh material to work with.
‘Scary Movie 3‘ earned $220.7 million worldwide, making it the second-highest grossing entry in the series and a strong vote of confidence in the franchise’s ability to survive a creative overhaul. The Zucker era demonstrated that the ‘Scary Movie’ brand had become bigger than any one creative team.
‘Scary Movie 4‘ earned $178 million at the global box office. After that, the series went quiet for several years before delivering its most troubled chapter. ‘Scary Movie 5‘ brought in only $78.4 million worldwide against a $20 million budget. The absence of Anna Faris and Regina Hall was widely noted, and the film’s diminished returns made it clear the franchise had lost its comedic center along with its original stars.
Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and the Return Everyone Wanted
The gap between the fifth and sixth films stands as the longest in the series’ history, and the reunion being assembled for the comeback is enough to make that wait feel justified. Anna Faris and Regina Hall will reprise their roles of Cindy and Brenda in the next ‘Scary Movie’ installment. “We can’t wait to bring Brenda and Cindy back to life and be reunited with our great friends Keenen, Shawn and Marlon — three men we’d literally die for (in Brenda’s case, again),” Faris and Hall said in a statement about their return.
The Wayans brothers will co-write and produce the new film, which is being developed by Miramax for Paramount, nearly 25 years after the original ‘Scary Movie’ hit theaters. That reunion of original creative architects with the stars most associated with the franchise’s peak years is what separates this from a routine cash-grab sequel.
The trailer revealed some of the horror films that will be satirized, including Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ and Coralie Fargeat’s ‘The Substance.’ Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Regina Hall, Anna Faris, Lochlyn Monroe, Dave Sheridan, and Jon Abrahams all returned to star in the film. The target list alone signals that the Wayans brothers have been paying close attention to what has taken over horror culture during their absence.
What ‘Scary Movie 6’ Needs to Prove
The official synopsis frames the film as taking aim at reboots, remakes, requels, prequels, sequels, spin-offs, elevated horror, origin stories, and every final chapter that absolutely is not final. That meta-awareness of franchise fatigue is smart positioning, particularly given how much of modern horror has become self-referential to the point of parody on its own terms.
The combined worldwide gross of the entire franchise so far is $896.6 million, meaning ‘Scary Movie 6’ would need to earn around $103.4 million to take the franchise beyond the $1 billion mark. With the original cast back and a target-rich horror landscape full of elevated prestige horror and legacy sequels, that milestone is within reach.
The Scary Movie franchise has never been about critical acclaim, but when it comes to laughs, parodies, and pure nostalgia, fans definitely have their favorites. The series has always known exactly what it is, and that self-awareness has been its greatest survival tool across more than two decades and five increasingly chaotic installments.
Whether you think the Wayans brothers walking back into the franchise they built is a long-overdue correction or a nostalgia play that courts its own disappointment, ‘Scary Movie 6’ arrives at a moment when horror has never been riper for the taking — so where do you stand on whether the original team can actually pull it off?
