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The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Austin Powers? The Godfather? Wild Things? Our writers on the franchises they would like to revive
The Thin Man series should not be rebooted so much as remixed, shaken a little and strained into crystal coupes. These glamorous 1930s capers starred the debonair duo of William Powell and Myrna Loy as frisky husband-and-wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, who solve crimes while cracking wise and necking cocktails, accompanied by their precocious wire fox terrier Asta. There were six films in the original run, starting with 1934's The Thin Man, an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, and ending in 1947. The perfect recipe for a new Thin Man film would comprise two charismatic movie stars with sizzling chemistry, the kind who look stunning in evening dress, but who can also ad lib their own gags, a cavalcade of plot twists and saucy co-stars, a happy ending, and of course a scene-stealing pooch. It's good, old-fashioned fun, but that's why it's so timeless, and a formula that can run and run – until the ice bucket is empty. Pamela Hutchinson Wild Things is a movie Film Twitter might say they just couldn't make any more, which is pretty much the best reason to give it a try. The gloriously trashy original, which spawned a series of straight-to-DVD sequels, starred Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon (shocking audiences by showing off all his meat) as exceptionally hot grifters using their sexual currency to break open trust funds. Wild Things was the neo-noir driftwood arriving after a wave of 90s erotic thrillers, when Girls Gone Wild was a thing and wet T-shirt competitions were peaking. That vibe is built into the movie's lurid south Florida aesthetic, which was an ogle fest certainly, but also deceptively clever and sensational with its knowing high camp performances and over-the-top accumulation of double and triple crosses. Wild Things is exactly the franchise to revisit now that we're in a moment when the erotic thriller is making a comeback (think Halina Reijn's smart and subversive embrace in Babygirl). It's got the room to improve and challenge what the original had to offer, but also embrace what it did well, showing a lot of skin but only revealing the true nature of its plot and appeal just when we thought the movie – and its moment – was over. Radheyan Simonpillai Look, I frankly can't conceive of a hunger for reviving any long-running franchise of the past half-century. Pretty much all of them have had their turn at this point. So let's take it back a bit further and yield the floor to Torchy Blane. This lady reporter and de facto gumshoe was played mostly but not exclusively by Glenda Farrell and featured in nine feature films released between 1937 and 1939, starting with the aptly titled Smart Blonde. Feature films meant something a little different back then; these B-movie mysteries and light adventure thrillers hovered around the 60-minute mark. They're also the kind of personality-driven plots that are more typically run into the ground by network TV. But wouldn't it be fun to see a true big-screen star like Amy Adams, Emma Stone or Zoe Saldaña cracking cases every year or two without the TV commitment or the obligations of brainless spectacle? Hire Torchy at an imperiled publication and bring back the crisp, short, well-made mystery picture! If the execs need a craven superhero connection, consider this: Torchy supposedly helped inspire the comics character Lois Lane. Whaddaya need, a road map? Jesse Hassenger There's nothing official yet on the books for a return to Elm Street but given the unending churn of horror resurrections (Scream continues, Halloween is getting another do-over, Friday the 13th is heading to TV, Texas Chainsaw has inspired a frenzied auction), something must be edging closer. The delay might be down to how nightmarish the last attempt was – 2010's drab and unscary retread, loathed by critics and disowned by lead Rooney Mara – but also how difficult it is to reinvent Freddy Krueger for a modern audience. A violent, sleepover-ruining villain had turned into a quippy, exhaustingly over-merchandised joke and those wishing to bring him back have surely been having sleepless nights trying to figure out the right balance. But there remains something terrifying, and endlessly inventive, about the engine at its core, allowing for a smart, visually ambitious film-maker to go wild on a new canvas. There's also mileage in exploring, and potentially tweaking, Krueger's cursed backstory for an even more divided small-town America (what if an outsider was framed for the wrongdoings of a corrupt community and returned with a vengeance?), finding nasty new ways to keep us up all night. Benjamin Lee 'One million dollars!' In the '90s, the Austin Powers franchise rightly achieved heavy cultural weight and widespread memeification for the way it hilariously dismantled spy thriller tropes while lambasting the uptight and power-hungry 1% – far before it was trendy to do so. But that was 20 years ago. As oligarchs today melt the ice caps to force-feed us self-driving cars and AI slop, and while Donald Trump amasses a Dr Evil–worthy group of sycophants in the executive branch, what could be more timely than a reboot of the Austin Powers series? In times of political upheaval and social unrest, comedy has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to speak necessary truths in a way that resonates broadly; even more importantly, mockery and laughter are proven deterrents against authoritarian regimes. Veronica Esposito I can personally live without movie franchises: I lost interest in Star Wars halfway through Return of the Jedi, gave up on Alien after Resurrection, and actually fell asleep during Matrix Reloaded, it was such a letdown. Recapturing lightning in a bottle is a task seemingly beyond everyone except James Cameron (I'll grant that Aliens and T2 are top-notch exceptions to the rule). The Godfather – not really a franchise as such, but in effect the inventor of the modern film series – is the biggest conundrum of them all. Godfathers 1 and 2 are both brilliant, which makes the awfulness of part III one of the most baffling disasters in cinema history. (Even more baffling, where did Sofia Coppola find the confidence to be such a great director herself after being so badly exposed as an actor, by her own dad.) Well, history records that Coppola – still then a film-maker to be reckoned with – only did part III to get out of a financial hole; and it also records he did discuss a fourth film with Mario Puzo, but it hit the buffers when the author died in 1999. So my vote is: if we can guarantee Godfather 4 is as good as 1 or 2, then please can we have it? If not, forget about it. Andrew Pulver The most incisive movie franchises reflect the time they arrived. By that measure, this would be the ideal moment to resurrect The Brady Bunch series. The original TV version of the show, which aired between 1969 and 1974, couldn't have been more popular, or more insipid, inspiring no fewer than five spin-off specials for the small screen, each dimmer than the next. In stark contrast, the movie series, which spawned three projects between 1995 and 2002, took a far more sophisticated and satirical approach, positioning the naivety and self-absorption of its '70s characters as hilarious foils to the larger world they now found themselves in. Fast forward several decades to the reactionary age of Trump. In key ways, today's climate echoes the Nixonian era of the original TV series, which had been conceived, in part, to reasserted 'traditional values' in the wake of the 60s revolution. But there's a built-in twist with this franchise: The Bradys were always kind people at heart, so placing them in the context of today's cruel cultural backlash could open up a whole new layer of nuance, allowing the family to find a sweet and funny balance between their simplistic notion of 'normalcy' and the complex world we actually live in. Jim Farber It has been over 30 years since Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar partied on from the basement set of their public access show in Aurora, Illinois, and the Saturday Night Live stars who originated them, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, are not exactly at the peak of their fame. But that's exactly why a new Wayne's World is a promising idea: Just as Wayne and Garth are on the wrong side of middle age, nostalgic for their brief time in the national spotlight, rock music itself has been on the decline, relegated mostly to legacy tours aimed at gen-Xers with deep pockets and bad backs. That may sound like a melancholy premise for a franchise built on silly banter and pop-culture references, but a YouTube-channel revival of Wayne's World seems plausible, as does the hilarious disconnect between old guys looking to 'party on' and a younger generation unaccustomed to guitars getting plugged into amplifiers. Scott Tobias If the three intervening decades since the release of Species – a period of time that's yielded Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin, Sally Hawkins's fishy fornication in The Shape of Water, and not one but two azure-skinned, kinda-nude Mystiques – have taught us anything, it's that the viewing public's desire to make it with not-quite-human organisms is only growing in ardor. That's the sturdy foundation upon which Roger Donaldson's admirably smutty sci-fi staple of adolescent sleepovers was built, its servicing of peculiar fetishes less out of joint with the present than the conditions of its making. That MGM would throw $35m (in 90s dollars!) at a softcore B-movie scans as utterly alien to today's studio protocols, and as such, a similar investment would be the ideal tonic for an anemic summer movie landscape. Right now, every tentpole is grasping for an air of can't-miss ceremony, which leads to leaden seriousness and self-importance; the people crave base pleasures, the dumb horny fun of getting ravished by a sextraterrestrial. (And just think of how well the novelization will sell with fan-fiction types.) Charles Bramesco How well do Shanghai Noon and Knights – the Owen Wilson/Jackie Chan martial arts/western buddy movies from the earlier noughties – stand up, 20 odd years on? A brief gander at the trailers feels … unencouraging but at the time I remember really liking these for their loose limbs and nimble feet, charming performances and some surprisingly good jokes. The first was set in the old west and had a lot of broad stroke nudge-nudge genre nods, the second in Victorianish London, with ribald support from Gemma Jones, Aidan Gillen and a very young Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Charlie Chaplin. A third was reportedly planned a few years later, set in Mexico, but it never happened because Jackie Chan 'lost interest'. Maybe the healthy box office for the Karate Kid reboot might reignite that? Perhaps Owen Wilson is finding his mojo again, post Stick? Either way, it's one breezy bit of entertainment I'd happily lap up again. Catherine Shoard
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Austin Powers? The Godfather? Wild Things? Our writers on the franchises they would like to revive
The Thin Man series should not be rebooted so much as remixed, shaken a little and strained into crystal coupes. These glamorous 1930s capers starred the debonair duo of William Powell and Myrna Loy as frisky husband-and-wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, who solve crimes while cracking wise and necking cocktails, accompanied by their precocious wire fox terrier Asta. There were six films in the original run, starting with 1934's The Thin Man, an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, and ending in 1947. The perfect recipe for a new Thin Man film would comprise two charismatic movie stars with sizzling chemistry, the kind who look stunning in evening dress, but who can also ad lib their own gags, a cavalcade of plot twists and saucy co-stars, a happy ending, and of course a scene-stealing pooch. It's good, old-fashioned fun, but that's why it's so timeless, and a formula that can run and run – until the ice bucket is empty. Pamela Hutchinson Wild Things is a movie Film Twitter might say they just couldn't make anymore, which is pretty much the best reason to give it a try. The gloriously trashy original, which spawned a series of straight-to-DVD sequels, starred Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon (shocking audiences by showing off all his meat) as exceptionally hot grifters using their sexual currency to break open trust funds. Wild Things was the neo-noir driftwood arriving after a wave of 90s erotic thrillers, when Girls Gone Wild was a thing and wet T-shirt competitions were peaking. That vibe is built into the movie's lurid South Florida aesthetic, which was an ogle fest certainly, but also deceptively clever and sensational with its knowing high camp performances and over-the-top accumulation of double and triple crosses. Wild Things is exactly the franchise to revisit now that we're in a moment when the erotic thriller is making a comeback (think Halina Reijn's smart and subversive embrace in Babygirl). It's got the room to improve and challenge what the original had to offer, but also embrace what it did well, showing a lot of skin but only revealing the true nature of its plot and appeal just when we thought the movie – and its moment – was over. Radheyan Simonpillai Look, I frankly can't conceive of a hunger for reviving any long-running franchise of the past half-century. Pretty much all of them have had their turn at this point. So let's take it back a bit further and yield the floor to Torchy Blane. This lady reporter and de facto gumshoe was played mostly but not exclusively by Glenda Farrell and featured in nine feature films released between 1937 and 1939, starting with the aptly titled Smart Blonde. Feature films meant something a little different back then; these B-movie mysteries and light adventure thrillers hovered around the 60-minute mark. They're also the kind of personality-driven plots that are more typically run into the ground by network TV. But wouldn't it be fun to see a true big-screen star like Amy Adams, Emma Stone or Zoe Saldaña cracking cases every year or two without the TV commitment or the obligations of brainless spectacle? Hire Torchy at an imperiled publication and bring back the crisp, short, well-made mystery picture! If the execs need a craven superhero connection, consider this: Torchy supposedly helped inspire the comics character Lois Lane. Whaddaya need, a road map? Jesse Hassenger There's nothing official yet on the books for a return to Elm Street but given the unending churn of horror resurrections (Scream continues, Halloween is getting another do-over, Friday the 13th is heading to TV, Texas Chainsaw has inspired a frenzied auction), something must be edging closer. The delay might be down to how nightmarish the last attempt was – 2010's drab and unscary retread, loathed by critics and disowned by lead Rooney Mara – but also how difficult it is to reinvent Freddy Krueger for a modern audience. A violent, sleepover-ruining villain had turned into a quippy, exhaustingly over-merchandised joke and those wishing to bring him back have surely been having sleepless nights trying to figure out the right balance. But there remains something terrifying, and endlessly inventive, about the engine at its core, allowing for a smart, visually ambitious film-maker to go wild on a new canvas. There's also mileage in exploring, and potentially tweaking, Krueger's cursed backstory for an even more divided small-town America (what if an outsider was framed for the wrongdoings of a corrupt community and returned with a vengeance?), finding nasty new ways to keep us up all night. Benjamin Lee 'One million dollars!' In the '90s, the Austin Powers franchise rightly achieved heavy cultural weight and widespread memeification for the way it hilariously dismantled spy thriller tropes while lambasting the uptight and power-hungry 1% – far before it was trendy to do so. But that was 20 years ago. As oligarchs today melt the ice caps to force-feed us self-driving cars and AI slop, and while Donald Trump amasses a Dr Evil–worthy group of sycophants in the executive branch, what could be more timely than a reboot of the Austin Powers series? In times of political upheaval and social unrest, comedy has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to speak necessary truths in a way that resonates broadly; even more importantly, mockery and laughter are proven deterrents against authoritarian regimes. Veronica Esposito I can personally live without movie franchises: I lost interest in Star Wars halfway through Return of the Jedi, gave up on Alien after Resurrection, and actually fell asleep during Matrix Reloaded, it was such a letdown. Recapturing lightning in a bottle is a task seemingly beyond everyone except James Cameron (I'll grant that Aliens and T2 are top-notch exceptions to the rule). The Godfather – not really a franchise as such, but in effect the inventor of the modern film series – is the biggest conundrum of them all. Godfathers 1 and 2 are both brilliant, which makes the awfulness of part III one of the most baffling disasters in cinema history. (Even more baffling, where did Sofia Coppola find the confidence to be such a great director herself after being so badly exposed as an actor, by her own dad.) Well, history records that Coppola – still then a fillm-maker to be reckoned with – only did part III to get out of a financial hole; and it also records he did discuss a fourth film with Mario Puzo, but it hit the buffers when the author died in 1999. So my vote is: if we can guarantee Godfather 4 is as good as 1 or 2, then please can we have it? If not, forget about it. Andrew Pulver The most incisive movie franchises reflect the time they arrived. By that measure, this would be the ideal moment to resurrect The Brady Bunch series. The original TV version of the show, which aired between 1969 and 1974, couldn't have been more popular, or more insipid, inspiring no fewer than five spin-off specials for the small screen, each dimmer than the next. In stark contrast, the movie series, which spawned three projects between 1995 and 2002, took a far more sophisticated and satirical approach, positioning the naivete and self-absorption of its '70s characters as hilarious foils to the larger world they now found themselves in. Fast forward several decades to the reactionary age of Trump. In key ways, today's climate echoes the Nixonian era of the original TV series, which had been conceived, in part, to re-asserted 'traditional values' in the wake of the '60s revolution. But there's a built-in twist with this franchise: The Bradys were always kind people at heart, so placing them in the context of today's cruel cultural backlash could open up a whole new layer of nuance, allowing the family to find a sweet and funny balance between their simplistic notion of 'normalcy' and the complex world we actually live in. Jim Farber It has been over 30 years since Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar partied on from the basement set of their public access show in Aurora, Illinois, and the Saturday Night Live stars who originated them, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, are not exactly at the peak of their fame. But that's exactly why a new Wayne's World is a promising idea: Just as Wayne and Garth are on the wrong side of middle age, nostalgic for their brief time in the national spotlight, rock music itself has been on the decline, relegated mostly to legacy tours aimed at gen-Xers with deep pockets and bad backs. That may sound like a melancholy premise for a franchise built on silly banter and pop-culture references, but a YouTube-channel revival of Wayne's World seems plausible, as does the hilarious disconnect between old guys looking to 'party on' and a younger generation unaccustomed to guitars getting plugged into amplifiers. Scott Tobias If the three intervening decades since the release of Species – a period of time that's yielded Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin, Sally Hawkins's fishy fornication in The Shape of Water, and not one but two azure-skinned, kinda-nude Mystiques – have taught us anything, it's that the viewing public's desire to make it with not-quite-human organisms is only growing in ardor. That's the sturdy foundation upon which Roger Donaldson's admirably smutty sci-fi staple of adolescent sleepovers was built, its servicing of peculiar fetishes less out of joint with the present than the conditions of its making. That MGM would throw $35m (in '90s dollars!) at a softcore B-movie scans as utterly alien to today's studio protocols, and as such, a similar investment would be the ideal tonic for an anemic summer movie landscape. Right now, every tentpole is grasping for an air of can't-miss ceremony, which leads to leaden seriousness and self-importance; the people crave base pleasures, the dumb horny fun of getting ravished by a sextraterrestrial. (And just think of how well the novelization will sell with fan-fiction types.) Charles Bramesco How well do Shanghai Noon and Knights – the Owen Wilson/Jackie Chan martial arts/western buddy movies from the earlier noughties – stand up, 20 odd years on? A brief gander at the trailers feels … unencouraging but at the time I remember really liking these for their loose limbs and nimble feet, charming performances and some surprisingly good jokes. The first was set in the old west and had a lot of broad stroke nudge-nudge genre nods, the second in Victorianish London, with ribald support from Gemma Jones, Aidan Gillen and a very young Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Charlie Chaplin. A third was reportedly planned a few years later, set in Mexico, but it never happened because Jackie Chan 'lost interest'. Maybe the healthy box office for the Karate Kid reboot might reignite that? Perhaps Owen Wilson is finding his mojo again, post Stick? Either way, it's one breezy bit of entertainment I'd happily lap up again. Catherine Shoard
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Kevin Williamson reacts to 'Scream 7' turmoil, cast shakeups
He'll be right back. Kevin Williamson, screenwriter for the first 'Scream' movie, is returning to direct the upcoming 'Scream 7,' premiering on February 27, 2026. 'Oh, it's been awesome [to return]. I've always been on the fringes of the last few 'Scream' movies, as sort of the granddaddy of the franchise,' he exclusively told The Post. Advertisement 8 Neve Campbell in 'Scream 4.' ©Dimension Films/Courtesy Everett Collection 8 Kevin Williamson, on set of 'Scream 5' in 2022. ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection Williamson, 60, who also created the classic teen drama 'Dawson's Creek,' wrote the first 'Scream' screenplay that launched the hit slasher franchise in 1996, as well as the screenplay for 'Scream 2' in 1997 and 'Scream 4' in 2011. Advertisement He was a producer on all of the 'Scream' films. In the upcoming 2026 movie, he's in the director's chair. 'They've been very kind to me and very welcoming,' he told The Post while promoting his new Netflix show, 'The Waterfront.' 8 Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell in 'Scream.' ©Dimension Films/Courtesy Everett Collection 'And then they allowed me to direct this one. And we had a blast,' Williamson added. 'It was so nice to work with Courteney Cox and Sidney and tell a new story. So, I hope people like it.' Advertisement The franchise follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who was a high school teen in the first movie. By the seventh installment, she'll be a mother with a teen daughter (Isabel May). In the first movie, Sidney is terrorized by Ghostface, a killer with a black cloak and white scream mask who ends up being two people: her boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and his obnoxious friend, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard). 8 Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard in 'Scream.' ©Dimension Films/Courtesy Everett Collection 8 Matthew Lillard and Rose McGowan in 'Scream.' ©Dimension Films/Courtesy Everett Collection Advertisement David Arquette co-starred as the hapless sheriff, Dewey Riley, while Cox played investigative journalist Gale Weathers. Lillard is returning for 'Scream 7' despite Stu getting killed off at the end of the first movie. Subsequent Ghostface killers have been different people in each film. When asked what he can share about Lillard's role in 'Scream 7,' Williamson quipped, 'Nothing. Not one word.' 8 Courteney Cox and David Arquette in 'Scream.' Courtesy Everett Collection 'But I will say, I love Matthew,' he continued. 'And it was such a pleasure to call him up. They let me be the one to call and ask them back to the franchise. And that was a really nice phone call.' 'Scream 7' has had behind-the-scenes upheaval, as Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera were originally slated to star in the flick before they exited the project and the movie got retooled. The first version of the horror film began to fall apart in 2023 when original directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin left the franchise to direct Barrera in a Universal movie titled 'Abigail.' 8 Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera attend the Global Premiere of Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group's 'Scream VI' at AMC Lincoln Square on March 6, 2023 in New York, New York. Getty Images for Paramount Pictures Advertisement Later that year, Barrera, 34, was fired for expressing support for Palestine amid the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza. Sources reportedly told Deadline that Barrera was let go from the production due to 'her Instagram stories which have been perceived as anti-Semitic.' It was initially reported that Ortega left the franchise due to 'pay and scheduling issues,' but in April, the 'Wednesday' star told The Cut, 'The Melissa stuff was happening…If 'Scream 7' wasn't going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn't seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.' 8 Kevin Williamson attends the 'The Vampire Diaries' panel during Comic-Con International 2016 at San Diego Convention Center on July 23, 2016 in San Diego, California. Getty Images Advertisement Williamson, meanwhile, said he is 'on the fringes' of the situation. 'Watching that all go down, and I'm not even sure what happened. I can't really speak to it, because I wasn't a part of it,' he told the Post. 'The thing about 'Scream' is it can live in any form. And you can return to a character like Sidney and Gale and tell that story, and then the next one can be about someone else,' he noted. 'I really like the idea that 'Scream' has evolved into a franchise that can expand in those ways.'
Geek Tyrant
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Kevin Williamson on Directing SCREAM 7 and Reuniting With Neve Campbell: 'It Needs to Be About Sidney' — GeekTyrant
After nearly three decades of shaping the Scream franchise from behind the keyboard, Kevin Williamson is finally stepping behind the camera for Scream 7 . According to him, it all comes down to one thing… Sidney Prescott. Speaking at the ATX TV Festival during a career retrospective panel, Williamson explained what finally drew him to direct the seventh installment of the beloved slasher series. 'The company pitched it to me because they said, 'This is going to be about Sidney Prescott. It needs to be about Sidney.' That's why I would want to do it. 'I do think there's a world we haven't tapped into — we've never gone home with her, who she is today, and we don't know what her life is about. I want to know those things.' It's a full-circle moment not just for Williamson, but for the franchise's beating heart, Neve Campbell. After skipping Scream 6 over a salary dispute, her return in Scream 7 is a course correction. Williamson was vocal about his support for Campbell during the previous controversy, and he doubled down during the panel. 'There was this big thing about the pay discrepancy, but it was also about the part. It was like, 'You want me to show up at the end of a movie with a gun and help everyone shoot Ghostface? That's great. I'll do it.' She was happy, but she'd also wanted a part. Actresses want to play parts,' he said. And that's exactly what she's getting. Williamson emphasized that Scream 7 is being built with Campbell, not just around her. 'So we were able to tap into that and find a way in. Working with Neve, we did it together. She was with me every step of the way, and she was so supportive and so helpful. She walked me through a lot of it. I hope it shows, but we had a blast.' While the script is officially credited to Scream veterans Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt, with Busick penning the screenplay from their story, it's clear that Williamson and Campbell's collaboration is at the center of what's coming. Busick previously said: 'We always wanted to do a Sidney movie and so it was like, 'All right, let's get into it and why now and why this one?'I don't want to give anything away about the reason [Scream 7] had to be a Sidney movie because there's a really cool reason… 'Scream is always in a conversation with the audience about the state of movies, the state of horror movies and in particular, franchises.' With a February 2026 release date set, Scream 7 is shaping up to be more than just another Ghostface installment, it's a return to the soul of the series. For fans who've grown up with Sidney Prescott, this may be the story they've been waiting for. Source: Variety
Geek Tyrant
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
SCREAM 7 Director Kevin Williamson Opens Up About Returning After Losing Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera — GeekTyrant
Scream 7 is officially slicing its way to theaters in 2026, but getting to this point was not a smooth ride. Before Neve Campbell was set to return as Sidney Prescott, the project was on life support. Now, Scream creator Kevin Williamson is finally breaking his silence about how the sequel came together after the franchise lost two of its leading stars, and how one unexpected phone call changed everything. For anyone who hasn't followed the behind-the-scenes chaos, in late 2023, Melissa Barrera was removed from Scream 7 following social media posts that the production company deemed antisemitic. Shortly after, Jenna Ortega exited as well. 'It was all kind of falling apart,' Ortega reportedly said of the situation. With director Christopher Landon stepping away after receiving threats, despite having nothing to do with Barrera's firing. Scream 7 was left with no cast, no director, and no direction. Enter Neve Campbell. In an interview with ScreenRant, Williamson recalled how bleak things were in the wake of the cast exits: 'Neve did. You are right. It was sort of, 'Well, what's going to happen?' After we lost Melissa and Jenna, and it just looked like we weren't going to see the Carpenter sisters in a third movie, it was kind of a bummer. It's like, 'What do we do next?'' Williamson, who famously wrote the original Scream in 1996, wasn't initially on board to direct the seventh film. But, that changed when the creative team pitched a interesting new direction, one that brought the story back to its roots and centered once again on Sidney Prescott. 'And then this idea to bring Sidney Prescott back — and not just bring her back, but to focus on her character, tell her story of who she is today — that got really exciting for me. And I think other people got really excited about it.' Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, who successfully rebooted the franchise with 2022's Scream and its 2023 follow-up, started shaping a new mystery. Once Campbell heard their pitch and read the script, she was in. But they weren't done just yet. 'And then they started writing a script. Jamie came up with this great story — Jamie Vanderbilt and Guy Busick — and they started to write this script, and it just sort of took on a life of its own. 'And then Neve read it and heard the pitch, and she signed on. And I was still just the executive producer who was just sort of there, watching from the sidelines… And then Neve called me one day and said, 'I think you should direct this.' And I went, 'No, no, no, no, no… okay, I'll do it.'' So far, the plot details are tightly under wraps, but Busick has teased that Campbell's return is for a 'really cool reason.' And the rest of the cast? It's a blend of returning fan favorites and intriguing new faces. Courteney Cox is back, along with Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and David Arquette's Dewey. Also returning are Matthew Lillard's Stu and Scream 3 's Roman Bridger, played by Scott Foley. New additions include Anna Camp, McKenna Grace, and Joel McHale. Scream 7 is set to hit theaters on February 27, 2026.
