The Scream Sequels That Would Never Be
When Scream 4 was released in 2011, Kevin Williamson had some tantalizing ideas for the sequels. Then the film under-performed at the box office.
Had things gone according to plan, Scream 7 (currently in theaters) would have been an entire other movie. But it’s not the first time that the franchise took a completely different turn, according to its creator Kevin Williamson. When Williamson and director Wes Craven reunited to make Scream 41, the idea was that the fourth film would set up a new trilogy that would take the original and new characters into uncharted territory. Had these plans seen the light of day, the Scream franchise would have been quite interesting.
Alas! Despite the team-up of Craven and Williamson, the return of the original cast plus fresh faces, and the fact that it was 11 years since the last movie, Scream 4 made less than $100 million at the box-office— the lowest of the franchise. Plans were sequels for put on hold. And after Wes Craven passed away in 2015, that was the final nail in the franchise’s coffin.2
In case you can’t remember what happened Scream 4, here’s how it went down: Basically, it turned out that the new Ghostface killings were orchestrated by Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), who was jealous of her cousin Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and wanted to gain some fame and fortune. The good guys prevail in the end, of course; Jill is zapped with defibrillators and shot in the chest, seemingly killed.
Here’s where it gets intriguing: Unlike in previous installments, the film ends with the media unaware of Jill’s involvement in the killings, and hail her as a survivor and hero of the new Woodsboro massacres. It’s an admittedly strange place to end the film on, and though Jill seems truly dead, it turns out that this was never going to be permanent.
Yep, the sequel would have brought back Jill Roberts.3
And not only would Jill have survived, she would’ve gotten away with the killings, too! I presume that out of some familial loyalty, maybe Sidney and the others chose to keep Jill’s involvement quiet. But the new Ghostface would’ve learnt about this and would go around killing Jill’s friends, forcing Jill to unmask the killer while also preventing the truth about her past murders from coming to light.4
The franchise’s meta-commentary tendencies is often reduced to the films’ tendency to poke fun at the horror genre and its tropes. But that’s always been only a part of the picture: it’s also commenting about the real world in which horror films are made. At the time, Jill’s desire for internet fame seemed quaint; today, it’s prescient about social media’s allure to make everyone a star. The planned sequel could have offered a nice Watergate-esque commentary about hiding truths from society, which would also paint Sidney and her pals into a corner for their complicity; the idea of Sidney and Jill also having to work together to stop Ghostface would have been a nice riff on Silence of the Lambs— using a killer to stop another killer.
Williamson never elaborated in detail on how this scenario would play out, but he did reveal that— had he gotten his way— he would’ve also killed Deputy Dewey in the fifth film5; which would tee-up the Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) character filling in the Sidney role in a potential sixth film where she would be dating a new man who may or not be the new killer.
This wouldn’t be the first time where a second Scream trilogy never got to see the light of day.
When the franchise was resurrected in 2022, it was going to be a new trilogy focusing on new characters, but with the original cast in supporting roles. The new story revolved around the Carpenter half-sisters, Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) with Sam Carpenter being the illegitimate daughter of original killer Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich, who pops up as hallucinations using iffy de-aging VFX). The new trilogy would have shown Sam struggling with her dark side, and ultimately succumbing to her father’s taunts to become a killer. Think Anakin Skywalker’s character arc in the Star Wars prequel.
Or at least, that’s what Skeet Ulrich claims. There’s good reason to believe him; both the Scream revival and Scream VI hinted at this trajectory, where in both films, Sam kills one of the two Ghostface killers; and in case that was too ambiguous, Sam literally dons her father’s original Ghostface costume and kills the mastermind of the new killings. There’s also a moment at the end where Sam looks at Billy’s Ghostface mask before tossing it away to join her friends. Judging by how the films were set up with the tension between the Carpenters front and center, I suppose that Ortega’s character would have faced off against Sam in the planned sequel— which, honestly, sounds promising. It’s not something the franchise has seen before.
The only reason plans for that film got aborted had nothing to do with money— Scream VI is the third-highest grossing entry in the series. It was events behind-the-scenes that killed the originally planned seventh Scream installment. Scheduling conflicts forced Radio Silence directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett to step down, and Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) was hired to direct. But pre-production was halted by the dual 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes; and just when it seemed like production could start again, Melissa Barrera was fired in November over her comments about the Israel-Gaza conflicts that had ignited a month earlier. The next day, Jenna Ortega also dropped out. In one short swoop, the revival had lost its two lead actresses. Later that December, Christopher Landon departed from the project, saying that it wasn’t the film he’d signed up to make.
And that’s how Kevin Williamson found himself being drawn back into the universe he created. Here’s how he recounts it happening:
They sent me the script. I read it. Then all the other stuff happened, and I got a phone call one day saying, “OK, well, we’re gonna go in a different direction now and we want to bring Neve Campbell back Do you have her number?” I think what they met by that is, “Can you call her?” Finally, I had something to do! The other time it was, “Do you happen to have Hayden Panettiere’s phone number?” And I called her and got them together.
He continues:
I’ve known Neve for all this time. And we’re dear friends. I was like, “You know, there’s a couple of hurdles you’re going to have with this one — and I think you know what they are.” They said they’d work all of that out. They just wanted to engage with her and see if she was interested in being Sidney Prescott again. So they let me participate in some of the development of the script. I got to work with Guy Busick on an outline of the story for her. We pitched it, and she was all in. And it was going to be the 30-year anniversary of the franchise, so we thought this could work really well to bring Sidney back and in a big way.
Initially, Williamson wasn’t planning to direct the seventh film. He only accepted it when his lead actress requested him to do it.
I got a phone call one day saying, “Neve wants to Zoom with you at five o’clock.” What does she want? I got nervous. We got on with producers and she said, “Will you please direct it?” That came out of nowhere, but I said yes before I even thought about it.
[Mild-spoilers for Scream 7 from here on. If you haven’t watched the film yet, you have been warned.]
Even though he never got to see his original plans for the Scream franchise play out as he would’ve liked, Williamson also thinks there’s plenty of juice in the tank and different directions that future stories can take.
I did think [Scream 7] might be the last film that we focus on Sidney wholly. What I love about Scream is that it’s found an identity and that it can reinvent itself. There’s someone different under that mask all the time. You can have a different killer, different motive, be in a different city. It can take on all these different ideas with the meta-universe we’ve created with the Stab franchise within the franchise. The premise of the original screen was someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far. That was the tagline. And this movie, we switched it up a little bit and we said someone has taken their love of Sidney Prescott one step too far. So we get into another scenario and another mindset of who the killer is and what the killer may be. The killer is always someone you know in these movies. Maybe this time it’s not.
He also reveals the decision to keep connective tissue to the past two newer films by bringing back Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown as twin siblings Chad and Mindy whose uncle was movie fanatic Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the only two returning faces from the revivals.
We chose to continue our storyline. We have Chad and Mindy in seven. I think they’re integral to this franchise now. They are the niece and nephew of Randy, so the legacy of our characters has continued through them.
Despite less-than-stellar reviews6, Scream 7 has performed well at the box-office, no doubt thanks to Neve Campbell being front and center in the film again since Scream 4; by the end of its run, it will probably make enough to justify either a new film.
This much certain: like Ghostface, the Scream franchise is impossible to put down— no matter how many times you try, it always finds a new way to return.
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Long live the movies!
D.L. Holmes
He was forced to sit out on writing Scream 3 due to other commitments.
Well, not really. There was the MTV TV spin-off in 2015 but without the involvement of the original cast and crew, and then in 2022, the Scream franchise would get the legacyquel treatment and deliver much stronger box-office numbers and critical reception.
In the movies, death is never permanent. Just look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe.
My guess is that the new Ghostface killer would have been connected to one of the previous murder victims, or even to Jill’s accomplice Charlie Walker, played by a pre-Succession Rory Culkin.
That did happen in Scream (2022). RIP Dewey.
Critics and audiences alike have given Scream 7 a lower rating. On average, it is the lowest-rated entry in the franchise, even less than the decidedly weaker Scream 3.