Kevin Williamson had much different plans for “Scream 5” and “Scream 6” but then “Scream 4” didn’t crush it at the box office and the franchise stalled …
Original “Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson is back for “Scream 7” — co-writing the script and directing the latest sequel in the long running horror franchise — but he hasn’t actually worked on any sequel since writing “Scream 4.”
That film also served as director Wes Craven’s final project prior to his death in 2015 but despite a renewed interest in the sequel, “Scream 4” didn’t crush it at the box office and the series effectively stalled out afterwards. But if Williamson had the chance, he already plotted out plans for both “Scream 5” and “Scream 6,” although sadly neither film ended up being made by him.
While “Scream” was eventually resurrected with the writing and directing team at Radio Silence taking over the franchise, Williamson revealed recently when speaking to CinePop that he had a much different plan in mind for both sequels following “Scream 4.”
“In my original conceit, Jill survived and went to college,” Williamson said. “She got away with it all, all of the killings in ‘Scream 4’ she got away with. She was now the new Sidney and she was the new celebrity victim. She was loving it and someone figured her out and started killing all of the people in her life. So in order for her not to be exposed as the killer, she had to find the killer and that was ‘Scream 5.’”
“Scream 4” centered around Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), who was Sidney Prescott’s cousin, and she orchestrated a series of brutal murders that was supposed to include Sidney and she would be left as the only survivor and that would allow her to become the new final girl. Obviously, Williamson initially planned on Jill surviving but that didn’t happen and so that sequel was scrapped.
The same goes for “Scream 5,” which would have also moved beyond Sidney Prescott as the main character with Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers taking over the spotlight role.
“My ‘Scream 6’ was now that Gale Weathers is trying to build a life without Dewey because I would have killed Dewey, too,” Williamson said. “I had planned to kill him as well. She was trying to rebuild her life and it was about her finding love and in a weird way she goes through exactly the same thing Sidney went through in ‘Scream’ 1, which was she’s dating a man, is he or isn’t he the killer? She doesn’t know so it was sort of the reverse.”
It’s interesting that much like what happened in the real “Scream 5,” Williamson also planned to knock off David Arquette’s lovable Dewey Riley.
Despite Williamson’s plans, the series effective went into hibernation after “Scream 4” and didn’t come back until the new “Scream 5” was released in 2022, which was followed by “Scream 6” in 2023.
“Scream 7” serves as a bit of a reboot for the series again with Neve Campbell returning to reprise her role as Sidney Prescott after sitting out “Scream 6” with several legacy cast members also slated to appear in the film — most notably Matthew Lillard, who played one of the original “Scream” killers, Stu Macher.
“Scream 7” lands in theaters on Thursday with early projections predicting a monster opening weekend with film potentially earning upwards of $50 milllion.
