Tyler Perry’s output might split opinion straight down the middle, but the guy’s a billionaire, so you can’t really argue with his results. Over the last three decades, he’s had his fingers in many pies including stints as an actor, writer, director, playwright and producer, while he owns his own production company and studio that’s played host to countless film and television shoots over the years.
Of course, his most popular character remains Madea, and even though he claimed to have retired the role for good with a sellout nationwide comedy tour, A Madea Homecoming is now on its way to Netflix, and scheduled to premiere in 2022. So far, Perry has thrown on the makeup to play the character in eleven stage plays, an animated feature, an in-character book and three guest appearances on various sitcoms, with Homecoming set to be her twelfth movie outing.
To date, the entire back catalogue of films where Madea turns up have hauled in close to $600 million at the box office, despite the vast majority of them being panned by critics, but there’s clearly an audience eager to see more of Perry’s most famous creation. And in a new interview, the 51 year-old explained why his self-imposed retirement lasted for less than eighteen months, saying the following about it:
“I was done with Madea, completely done with it. But as I’ve been looking at the state of the world, and I finished a tour in January, just before the pandemic started to break in the country, and the amount of joy and laughter that it brought to so many people, that’s what I think is missing. We need that laughter and that joy.”
There’s definitely a surprisingly large amount of Madea enthusiasts out there to ensure that A Madea Homecoming will draw in a big crowd, and Netflix is probably the ideal place for it to happen, although it would be nice to see Perry use his increased standing in the industry to tackle more daring and ambitious projects like his turns in Vice, Gone Girl or star-studded upcoming comedy Don’t Look Up, as opposed to returning to the same well for a twelfth time.