It was announced on website BeyondHollywood.com last week that 1991 film New Jack City would be further franchised with a sequel. Although the original film and its vivid characters remain a conversation piece, specifically within Hip Hop, the film sequel will not include cast members Chris Rock, Ice-T, Wesley Snipes, or director Mario Van Peebles.

Franchise creator and New Jack City screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper spoke to HipHopDX today. Here’s what he said:

“I know Warner Brothers is not only in the business of making movies, they are in the business of making money. So on that level, I understand why they want to make a sequel of New Jack City as fast and as cost-efficient as possible. But New Jack City is a franchise, and a movement and a template. If there was no New Jack City, there would be no Nino-swagger available for Sean Carter, Sean Combs, Dwayne Carter, and Clifford Harris to study and become Jigga, Diddy, Lil Wayne, and T.I. There would be no Paid In Full, and there would be no The Wire. So for Warner to do a direct-to-DVD New Jack City without Wes Snipes, Al Payne, Ice-T, Chris Rock, Mario Van Peebles, and myself, is almost like doing the Godfather II with the cast of ’70s sitcom Barney Miller. It’s a stinker. But it is what it is. I just had to speak on it. And my novella “The Diary Of Nino Brown” is my umbrella against the wack juice that sequel is going to be spraying.”

The first chapter of the aforementioned novella is available on his site Requiem 4 Tha Zooted [http://www.r4thaz.blogspot.com/] for readers to sample.

I will say this, there’s always a risk in taking a successful movie and making it a straight-to-DVD franchise (just look at Carlito’s Way or Belly 2). I really hope that Warner Bros. decides not to go forward with this plan and just leave New Jack City where it belongs….among the best gangster films of the last 20 years.