Tyler Perry’s character Madea is extremely hard to kill — she even came back to life in “Boo 2! A Madea Halloween.” But Perry says he’s finally retiring the character for good in his upcoming “Tyler Perry’s a Madea Family Funeral.”
“This is it,” Perry told SiriusXM radio host Bevy Smith on her show “Bevelations” on Monday. “It’s time for me to kill that old bitch. I’m tired!”
“Family Funeral,” which opens in theaters on March 1, 2019, will be the eighth and final film in the Madea franchise and the 11th film in which Perry’s portrayal of Madea has appeared. Perry clarified that he shot the film two years earlier and planned to release it in between “Boo 2!,” the drama “Acrimony” with Taraji P. Henson and his latest film “Nobody’s Fool,” which opens this weekend.
“We’re gonna say goodbye in ’19,” Perry said. “I just don’t want to be her age playing her.”
Perry also said on the show that he’ll be taking the character on a “farewell” stage tour, including some of the original characters and actors from across the franchise of films.
Meanwhile, Smith also asked Perry if he would ever consider doing a play on Broadway, and it looks like that’s extremely unlikely.
“My thing with Broadway is that you got to do the exact same thing every night, the exact same way. That wouldn’t work for me,” Perry said. “I’d piss off all the producers. I’d be like, look, we gotta do something different.”
Listen to Perry talk about Madea above. “Nobody’s Fool” opens Nov. 2, and “Tyler Perry’s a Madea Family Funeral” opens March 1, 2019.