Following Scream 7‘s long and bumpy road to the screen, Radio Silence is reflecting on their original vision for the slasher installment.
The directing duo, consisting of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, recently described “how hard” they wanted to go with their version of the film, before ultimately departing the project to direct their vampire ballerina flick, Abigail (2024), with Christopher Landon temporarily stepping in for the pair.
“We never read a draft of any version of Scream 7 that we were going to do because we had left to do Abigail before that,” noted Bettinelli-Olpin to Entertainment Weekly. “The thing that we had in our minds for Scream 7 was sort of like, ‘How hard can we go with this?’ It was the thing that we talked a lot about. For us, it was always this idea of, [if] Scream VI is like a secret feel-good movie, Scream 7‘s going to f*ck you up. That was as much as we ever got to.”
Gillett added, “Given that we expanded the sort of scope of the story by going to New York, the other thing that we had talked about — just Matt and I, by the way, it wasn’t a conversation with the writers — was, ‘How do you do the opposite for 7?’ Like, shrink it down and make it this like ultra-contained, almost continuous, like minute-to-minute thing. But outside of our own stupid idea, we weren’t privy to any plan beyond just, ‘There’s gonna be another one.’”
Although they didn’t have specifics to share, Skeet Ulrich recently teased what was supposed to happen in Scream 7 with his murderous character Billy Loomis’ daughter Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) in the “really, really interesting” sequel, before Barrera was fired from the franchise.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett attend the premiere of ‘Abigail’ on April 17, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Gilbert Flores/Variety
“I’m not involved. I’m really excited though,” he said of Scream 7. “I’m excited for [original Scream (1996) writer] Kevin Williamson to take the helm and to see what the mastermind of it all comes up with. I have no clue.”
Ulrich added, “I used to know because part of coming back for five and six was being a part of seven. It was a three-picture arc for Billy Loomis, or the imagination of Billy Loomis in Melissa Barrera’s character’s head. But when all that went down with her, obviously you lose her and you lose what’s in her head.”
Spyglass fired Barrera in November 2023 over her social media posts on the Israel-Hamas conflict and the “atrocities being committed against Palestinians,” explaining the company has “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.”
Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott in ‘Scream 7’
Paramount/Spyglass
Following her ousting, Jenna Ortega also exited the franchise, later noting that the sequel “was all kind of falling apart” without Barrera to play its new ‘final girl’ Sam Carpenter. Director Christopher Landon dropped out of the project as well, citing “highly aggressive and really scary” death threats targeting his children.
Neve Campbell was then brought back to reprise her role as OG ‘final girl’ Sidney Prescott in March 2024, with original Scream (1996) writer Williamson on board to direct. She previously sat out 2023’s Scream VI over the low pay offer.