"Malcolm D. Lee did something that very few people had really aspired towards," Terrence Howard reflected on NPR's Tell Me More in 2013. "You know, we knew there were upscale black Americans that were living real lives, but often times that was never depicted inside of films, even on television, you know. What he created back then gave everybody an opportunity to say, 'There is a true middle class black family. And this is their language. This is how they behave.'
"So you don't have to be, you know, a... black person pretending to be white. And you don't have to be ghetto friendly. You can actually be, you know, extra medium."
Added Sanaa Lathan, "I think audiences, especially African-American audiences, were hungry to see themselves or see people that they know onscreen. And I think that this movie—along with some other movies at the time, Love Jones was another one—really depicted people that we know personally."
The Best Man Wedding, the years-in-the-making third film in an envisioned trilogy, has been "announced," but all those conflicting schedules haven't yet come together.
"If it's going to happen, it will happen before 14 years," Lee promised, talking to the LA Daily News in 2016.
In the meantime, he had the biggest hit of his career with Girls Trip, which made $140.6 million worldwide on a $19 million budget and featured a breakout performance by Tiffany Haddish, who Lee directed again in Night School.
Lee told Raftery that, as has been the case with so many hit movies featuring all-black casts over the past two decades, people still tended to say films like Girls Trip "overperform." But, he added, "maybe you just underestimate them."
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