In the world of the “Scream” movies, masked killers have been terrorizing teenagers and young adults for 30 years. But as Paramount releases “Scream 7,” the latest installment in the franchise, the drama behind the scenes might be louder than the shrieks onscreen.
To understand the controversies, it helps to know the franchise’s history, starting with the original “Scream” (1996), directed by Wes Craven. It started the trend of winking, teen-centered slashers, and two sequels about the travails of the final girl, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), quickly followed, both featuring Courteney Cox as the reporter Gale Weathers and David Arquette as the face of law enforcement, Dewey Riley. In 2011, “Scream 4” rebooted the premise with a younger generation of stars. More than a decade later, in 2022, Paramount decided to try again.
The fifth movie, confusingly titled “Scream,” featured Campbell, Arquette and Cox, but centered on sisters played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega. Craven died in 2015, so new directors, Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, took over. The film received solid reviews and was a box office success, leading to a quick-turnaround sequel, “Scream VI,” in 2023. But plans for a follow-up to that quickly went awry. As “Scream 7” hits screens on Friday, here’s what happened.
The Back Story
“Scream VI” wasn’t as controversial, but it wasn’t free from bad press, either, after Campbell announced she would not be returning because of a salary dispute. “As a woman, I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to ‘Scream,’” she said in a 2022 statement to Variety. “I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise.” So the film went ahead without Campbell and moved the action to New York City, where members of the new generation of Ghostface targets were attending college. Bettinelli-Olpin said they would “never give up on” Campbell. “We’d love to be able to make another movie with her,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
A High-Profile Firing
A few months after “Scream VI” was released in March 2023, with the best opening weekend in franchise history, it was announced that the seventh “Scream” would be getting a fresh director. Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin stepped aside for Christopher Landon, whose credits, including the “Happy Death Day” movies, owe a lot to the meta, campy tone of “Scream.”
At the time, it appeared that the main stars, including Barrera and Ortega, would return.
But eight months later, Variety reported that the production company Spyglass had fired Barrera over her social media posts supporting the Palestinian cause after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Spyglass said the posts were antisemitic.
A spokesperson for the company told Variety: “We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”
Barrera eventually responded on Instagram, writing, “I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people.” She added, “As a Latina, a proud Mexicana, I feel the responsibility of having a platform that allows me the privilege of being heard, and therefore I have tried to use it to raise awareness about issues I care about and to lend my voice to those in need.”
Falling Dominoes
A day after Barrera’s firing made news, Ortega dropped out. In an interview with The Cut last year, Ortega said her decision had “nothing to do with pay or scheduling.” Instead, she said, “the Melissa stuff was happening, and it was all kind of falling apart.” She added if the movie wasn’t going to be with the people she “fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”
By December 2023, Landon had announced on X that he too had left the project. “It was a dream job that turned into a nightmare. And my heart did break for everyone involved,” he wrote. He instead made the date-night thriller “Drop.”
A Reboot of a Reboot
Just as it’s hard to kill a Ghostface, it is also hard to kill “Scream.” Campbell announced in March 2024 she was returning to play Sidney once again, and this time she would be directed by Kevin Williamson, who wrote three of the first four entries. “I’m very happy and proud to say I’ve been asked, in the most respectful way, to bring Sidney back to the screen and I couldn’t be more thrilled,” Campbell wrote on Instagram.
Now “Scream 7” comes to the screen feeling something like a reboot of a reboot. The new movie puts the focus squarely back on that eternal survivor, Sidney, who now lives with a cop husband, (Joel McHale) and a teenage daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Tatum is 17, the same age Sidney was in the first “Scream,” and, as is to be expected, Ghostfaces start popping up with threats. Tatum’s presence means that Williamson and his co-writer, Guy Busick, who also worked on the 2022 and 2023 films, are doing a hefty bit of hoping that fans buy into the life they have imagined for their heroine. After all, it didn’t seem like Sidney had a 2-year-old daughter during the events of “Scream 4” in 2011.
There are two holdovers from the Barrera and Ortega era: Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding, who play twins Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin, the niece and nephew of Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the horror movie-obsessed teen from the 1996 original. Their presence is explained by the fact that they are now working for Gale, who is reviving her career in TV news. Cox also reprises her role as the reporter who has been at the scene of every Ghostface killing from the beginning.
So, will audiences flock to see more stabbings? The box office projections are optimistic, but calls to boycott the film over the way Barrera was treated continue. On Wednesday night, about 25 protesters demonstrated near the movie’s premiere at the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles, according to a report in Variety.
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