Scream 2 Remains the Perfect Slasher Sequel

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What a difference a year makes. After the overwhelming (and surprising) success of Wes Craven’s original Scream, which grossed a massive $173 million against a $15 million budget and effectively reinvigorated the long-dormant slasher genre, Dimension/Miramax Films managed to bring the whole gang back together for Scream 2 with even better results.

The sequel, released on Dec. 12, 1997 — exactly one week before James Cameron’s Titanic began its legendary voyage — and grossed a massive $32.9 million in its opening weekend en route to $101.1 million in the U.S. and $172.4 million worldwide.

Here’s the official plot synopsis: “Sidney (Neve Campbell) and tabloid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) survived the events of the first Scream, but their nightmare isn’t over. When two college students are murdered at a sneak preview of ‘Stab,’ a movie based on the events from the first film, it’s clear a copycat killer is on the loose. Sidney and Gail, as well as fellow survivors Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have to find out who is behind this new murder spree, before they all end up dead.”

I recall watching Scream 2 on VHS in preparation for the yet-to-be-released Scream 3 my senior year of high school. And while none in the franchise ever truly blew me away, I enjoyed the sequel more than any of the others for its clever plot and reliance on sequel troupes.

Also, from a technical perspective, Scream 2 is leaps abound above its predecessor — even though the budget only grew by roughly $10 million — displaying more competence with its shots and action sequences. Even the acting takes a step forward, as everyone involved reacts more appropriately to the horrific events taking place around them.

RELATED: Looking Back at the Original Scream and Its Reinvigoration of Slashers

Scream 2’s opening sequence is brilliant, if not a tad long-winded. Before the title reveal, we meet a young couple, Phil and Maureen, played by Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett Smith, respectively, who anxiously await a showing of Stab, the film within a film based on the events of Scream. The pair debate the merits of slasher films, the lack of African American representation in the genre, throw some shade at the “Sandra Bullock s—” playing down the street, and give a call out to Entertainment Weekly, which represented roughly 90% of our pop culture news at the time.

Inside the theater, excited moviegoers dressed in Ghostface costumes and wielding fake, blood-soaked knives, run amok, showing very little reverence for Stab’s true-life events — clearly, a comment on audience fixation with violence as entertainment.

Stab starts and we are thrust back into the events that transpired at the beginning of Scream, albeit with Heather Graham standing in for Drew Barrymore, and the location now an exotic mansion boasting a swimming pool, its lights providing an eerie atmosphere. The events play out in a similar manner as the original film, albeit with more intensity and technical prowess — an aspect mirrored by Scream 2.

“B—-, hang the phone up and star-69 his ass,” Maureen hollers at the screen as attendees around her hiss. Maureen isn’t privy to slasher rules, and her inability to see past the limits of the genre’s creativity, in turn, limits her ability to appreciate the film, which, in turn, makes us less sympathetic towards her person.

Meanwhile, Heather Graham’s character undresses and the crowd, including Phil (much to Maureen’s chagrin), goes wild. This was an interesting bit because it plays to the notion that we, the audience, prefer the hyper-reality presented by film over the actual reality of life. Sitting right next to Phil is a young, beautiful woman who wants nothing more than a romantic night with her boyfriend. Except, he continually rejects her advances in favor of artificial entertainment; and we, the audience, are doing exactly the same thing waiting to see what sort of grisly demise awaits Phil and Maureen.

At any rate, Maureen goes to get popcorn (during the first scene?), gets scared by a Ghostface-wearing Phil, and then returns to the movie (which, surprisingly, has yet to move past the first action sequence) alone. Phil heads to the bathroom where he is quickly killed by the real Ghostface, who assumes Phil’s jacket and heads back to the theater and proceeds to stab Maureen in front of an oblivious audience so consumed with the events onscreen that they can’t discern reality from fiction.

This pre-credits sequence takes just under 12 minutes to unfold, and perfectly sets the mood for the remaining film, even if the rest of Scream 2 never quite reaches the same level of brilliance.

We see Sidney some two years after the events of Scream as she nonchalantly deals with a prank phone call (using the same Ghostface voice, no less) using Caller ID, which had become a popular household item during that time, effectively spelling the end of the prank-call era. We meet a supporting cast consisting of eventual stars, namely Sarah Michelle Gellar (who enjoyed massive success with TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scream knockoff I Know What You Did Last Summer in March and October of the same year), Elise Neal, Timothy Olyphant, Jerry O’Connell, Portia de Rossi, and Liev Schreiber (expanding on his brief cameo in Scream).

There’s a great scene in which members of a film class debate the merits of the film sequel and struggle to find a follow-up that trumps the original — a bit only undone by Randy’s flub of the Aliens line.

After a lengthy re-introduction of the main characters — including Gale Weathers, whose book about the events of Scream led to Stab; Dewey, who now sports a limp and a disdain for all things media related; and Randy, who uses movies as a means to understand his own, real-life slasher story — we finally arrive at our second action scene. This time, we follow Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Cici as she tries to dispatch The Voice, but quickly comes under Ghostface’s blade, a bit that felt more obligatory than necessary.

This sequence gives way to another chase scene in which Sidney must evade Ghostface. Jerry O’Connell’s Derek, aka Sidney’s boyfriend, pursues the masked villain but sustains a cut to his arm. Naturally, after the events of the first film, in which Sidney’s then-boyfriend Billy pretended to die to throw her off his scent, we’re suspicious of anything to do with our main heroine’s admirers. Luckily, Sidney shares our thoughts and grows wary of Derek’s near-perfect charm, leaving the poor guy pining after her for the rest of the film.

At one point he sings to her in front of a packed lunchroom, and if the moment comes across like a cheap knockoff of a similar scene from Tony Scott’s Top Gun, well, that’s because it is — but Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson tell us it is … lazy or inspired? You decide.

We also get more Stab clips, featuring Luke Wilson as Billy and Tori Spelling (in a clever callback to Scream) as Sidney.

I love how Dewey and Randy watch a scene from their lives play out on TV. How weird would it be to see yourself played by someone else? Any number of shows and films have played with this idea, perhaps most memorably on Seinfeld, but too often we overlook the reality behind the fiction. Imagine a survivor of Pearl Harbor watching Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, or Mark Zuckerberg watching David Fincher’s The Social Network … moments of your life played for mass entertainment. I imagine the experience would be equal parts thrilling and appalling.

Anyways, we get a bit with Randy explaining the rules of the slasher sequel, such as higher body counts and more elaborate death scenes, to Dewey, and there’s a humorous bit where the duo try to use their intellect to figure out who the killer is, effectively mirroring the audience’s attempts to do the same without much luck.

That’s because, really, the killer could be anybody. Ghostface doesn’t assume any specific trait that links him with any of the film’s characters, and mostly behaves like a supernatural entity. Since everyone has a realistic motive, Scream 2 could end with any cast member under the mask with minimal change to the story or climax — and the audience would happily continue to consume the product.

RELATED: Scream Promo and Featurette Bring Gale Weathers Back to Woodsboro

And really, that’s the downfall of this otherwise fascinating sequel — the ending. After all the buildup and carefully executed death scenes, including, memorably, Randy’s death-by-van-abduction, the film offers up two antagonists who induce more shrugs than gasps.

The first, Billy’s mother, played by Laurie Metcalf, appears throughout the film as a Gale Weathers knockoff named Debbie Salt. The second, Mickey, pops in and out of the plot without much to do other than foreshadowing his involvement by holding a video camera in every scene. Each has their own personal motives for doing what they did, but neither is as interesting (or messed up) as Billy or Stu at the end of Scream.

By contrast, the more we learn about Billy’s mother or Mickey, the less interesting they become.

Seemingly aware of this lackluster outcome, Craven goes for broke and stages a long-winded action climax atop a musical stage consisting of fake thunder and lightning effects that drags on for far too long. I did like the way Mickey goads Sidney into believing Derek is one of the killers, though, and thought Campbell did a stellar job in the sequence:

Otherwise, Scream 2 ends in a similar manner as Scream with the heroes wounded but ultimately victorious, which feels more redundant than reinvigorating.

Even so, up until that point, Scream 2 packs some heat thanks to intense sequences such as the bit where Sidney has to crawl over her attacker (rather than just beat him to death while he’s unconscious) in order to escape a wrecked car:

I also loved the moment where Dewey gets stabbed while Gale stumbles about in a soundproof booth:

I hated Randy’s death, as he felt like an essential piece of the Scream puzzle but I supposed that was the point — to shock viewers by killing off a main protagonist:

Finally, shout out to Liev Schreiber for his performance as Cotton, a young man trying to make the best of his dire situation. There’s a scene in which he confronts Sidney in a library that’s both chilling and kind of sad, especially when you find out he’s actually a pretty good dude:

Scream 2 doesn’t transcend the genre the way Scream did one year prior, but it certainly stands as a worthy sequel that actually surpasses the original in terms of quality — even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Neve Campbell’s Net Worth Includes Her Original ‘Scream’ Salary—Here’s What She Made Then Vs. Now

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Scream queen. Over 25 years after becoming a global sensation thanks to Scream, Neve Campbell’s net worth has continued to thrive. But her salary over the years for each of the Scream movies might surprise you.

Long before starring in Scream, Campbell—whose full name is Neve Adrianne Campbell—was born in October 1973 in Guelph, Ontario. She grew up in the Canadian town alongside her three brothers Christian, Alex and Damian. Her mother Marnie was a yoga instructor and psychologist from Amsterdam, while her father Gerry immigrated from Glasgow, Scotland to Canada to teach high school drama classes. While Campbell’s parents divorced when she was only two years old, she was still inspired by the pair’s creative pursuits. In fact, Campbell came from a long line of performers: Her maternal grandparents owned a theater company in the Netherlands, whereas her grandparents on her father’s side were also actors.

When she was six years old, Campbell witnessed a performance of The Nutcracker that would change her life. The budding performer enrolled at the Erinvale School of Dance to study ballet after the performance, before eventually transferring to the National Ballet School of Canada, where she trained and performed in productions of The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. But after suffering a series of dance-related injuries, Campbell decided to make another career-defining move at the age of 15, when she turned to acting instead. She went on to study theatre at the John F. Ross Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph, where she starred in local productions of The Phantom of the Opera.

In the early ‘90s, Campbell began branching out to film and television. Her on-screen debut came in 1991 after working on a Coca-Cola commercial. Later that year, Campbell landed an uncredited guest appearance on the show My Secret Identity. The following year, she appeared as Laura Capelli in an episode of The Kids in the Hall before landing her first lead role as Daisy in the Canadian drama series Catwalk. She later appeared as a guest on several Canadian TV series, including 1994’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.

After landing a number of roles in Canada, Campbell relocated to the United States to make her big break. In 1994, she landed the role of orphaned teen Julia Salinger on the Fox drama series Party of Five, which aired until 2000. She emerged from the series as a teen idol, earning a Teen Choice Awards nomination for Choice TV actress and a Golden Globe Award alongside her cast for Best Drama in 1996. While on the show, Campbell also landed her first feature film role in the supernatural blockbuster, The Craft, which premiered in 1996.

But Campbell’s biggest role to date has to be her role as Sidney Prescott in Wes Craven’s Scream. The film—which remains the highest-grossing slasher film in decades—launched an entire franchise starring Campbell and other original cast members such as Courteney Cox and David Arquette in a series of sequel films, including 1997’s Scream 2, 2000’s Scream 3, 2011’s Scream 4 and 2022’s Scream, otherwise informally known as Scream 5. For her role in the film series, Campbell has earned a number of awards—not to mention, a hefty boost to her net worth.

So, what is Neve Campbell’s net worth today? For everything we know about how much Neve Campbell has earned from her role in the Scream franchise and more, just keep on reading below.

How much did Neve Campbell earn from Scream?

Neve Campbell has starred as scream queen Sidney Prescott in every installment of the Scream franchise to date—and she has earned a pretty penny while doing so.

When Scream premiered in 1996, the film was an instant financial and critical triumph. The first film in the series generated over $173 million at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing slasher film until the release of Halloween in 2018. In 1997, Campbell reprised her role in Scream 2, which grossed over $170 million at the box office. Scream 3, by comparison, made slightly less when it premiered in 2000. The film brought in over $160 million and marked a temporary end to the saga until the franchise’s return over a decade later with 2011’s Scream 4. The fourth film in the Scream franchise earned over $97 million at the box office. According to TheRichest, Campbell’s take-home pay from the first film in the franchise ended up being around $1.5 million. Meanwhile, she reportedly earned a salary bump to $3.5 million for Scream 2 and $4 million for Scream 3.

After four Scream films, Campbell told Entertainment Weekly in 2016 that she would be open to reprising her role once more, but the decision would be “a tough one” following the loss of the franchise’s director, Wes Craven, who died in 2015.

“Wes was so responsible for the success of it and the brilliance of it, and he was a dear, dear friend and a mentor, and I just don’t know how I would feel at the moment if it came around again,” she told the publication at the time. “It would have to be something really special and really different. They’d have to be really convincing about who they decided to bring on as director, and I’d still have to do a bit of soul-searching on that one.”

Five years later, Campbell’s casting as Sidney Prescott was confirmed for the fifth Scream film, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and planned for release in January 2022. While she was first hesitant to participate after Craven’s death, she was eventually persuaded. “The new directors came to me with this beautiful letter saying that they’ve become directors and love film because of these films, and because of Wes, and they really want to be true to his story and his journey with these films, so I was really happy to hear that,” she told Variety in 2020.

Though Neve Campbell’s Scream 5 salary has yet to be publicly reported, we’d wager to say that she’s earning a significant paycheck based on the massive box office earnings and salaries from the previous four films in the Scream franchise to date.

What is Neve Campbell’s net worth?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Neve Campbell’s net worth is $10 million as of 2022. This accounts for Campbell’s salaries from each of the Scream franchise films, including her $1.5 million, $3.5 million and $4 million paychecks from Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3, respectively. While Campbell’s salary for Scream 4 and Scream 5 are unknown, it’s clear that the trajectory of her earnings is only going up from here.

Scream 5 premieres in theaters on January 14, 2022. You can get tickets here for your local showings. Plus, here’s how to watch the Scream movies in order for free.

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‘Scream’ Writer Details the Bloody, 15-Minute Ghostface Fight He Cut From the Franchise

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Wes Craven’s “Scream” franchise has no shortage of brutal kills, but it turns out one of the craziest bloodbaths never made it into the franchise. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, original “Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson detailed an extended 15-minute fight scene between Ghostface and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) that he wrote for the opening of “Scream 4.” The scene would’ve flipped the script on the franchise. Each installment opens with Ghostface killing an unsuspecting victim. “Scream 4” was to show Sidney triumphing over Ghostface, but not without a ton of bloodshed.

“She fought for her life,” Williamson said of the cut opening. “It was a big, huge, 15-minute fight where she kept stabbing the killer, the killer kept stabbing her. I think she was stabbed five times and crawling across the floor. And then she killed the killer, and the surprise was she didn’t die [like the characters attacked in the openings of the three previous ‘Scream’ films]. The killer died.”

Sidney was to kill one Ghostface, only for another Ghostface to show up and terrorize Woodsboro. The scene got removed when Williamson came up with an even better idea: To open “Scream 4” with scenes from the fictional “Stab” movies but playing them off like the real opening to “Scream 4.”

“One night, I remember I was just up at 3:00 in the morning, and I had this idea, and I just started writing to see where it went,” Williamson said. “I did the movie-within-a-movie [concept] because I knew Sidney was coming in with a self-help book, and I didn’t know how that would land. I wanted to make sure that we kept ‘Stab’ alive because that’s the fun part of the deconstruction of the film, and so I just wrote that in one night.”

“I wrote it and sent it to Wes [Craven], and he goes, ‘Oh, no, this one’s better,’” Williamson added. “When I brought it in, everyone jumped on that and said, ‘This is great.’ And it was. It was much better than the scene I wrote.

Williamson wrote “Scream,” “Scream 2” and “Scream 4,” and he returned to the franchise as producer on the new “Scream” movie. He added that parts of the cut “Scream 4” bloodbath opening showed up in the pilot for his short-lived Fox serial killer show “The Following.”

‘Scream’ hopes to provide box office jolt as 2022’s ‘muddy waters,’ Omicron loom

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After a few weeks of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ domination, the box office is looking for its next success story — and it might just find that in ‘Scream.’

The cult favorite slasher thriller is back for a fifth round on Friday as a theatrical-only release. The film is largely expected to lag behind ‘Spider-Man’ over the long MLK holiday, but is hoping to earn $25 million-plus at the U.S. box office. Even with Omicron-driven COVID-19 infections jumping, some analysts predict it could go even higher, especially with relatively strong initial reviews.

Featuring the original cast and some new faces, ‘Scream’ will rely on past nostalgia to round up audience members. The first film, which debuted over 25 years ago in 1996, earned $103 million domestically.

The subsequent releases have tapered off, with ‘Scream 2’ (1997) earning $101 million, ‘Scream 3’ (2000) pulling in $89 million and ‘Scream 4’ (2011) topping out at just $38 million.

Following the movie’s theatrical run, it will be available to stream on Paramount+ — a model that many studios have adapted this year.

Jenna Ortega stars in the new ‘Scream’ movie (Courtesy: Paramount)

IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told Yahoo Finance that he doesn’t expect COVID-19 disruptions to “cause a big negative for the year.” Instead, he insisted a big risk for 2022 is studios’ lack of faith in the theatrical release model.

“During 2021, [studios] took a lot of movies and put them on day-and-date streaming and as a result of that they didn’t have good box office performance,” the CEO explained.

Gelfond added that, even on the streaming side, the numbers showed that “people didn’t sign up for streamers for movies…the model of selling simultaneous streaming didn’t work.”

Still, the metrics of comparing a streaming view to a movie ticket are puzzling to experts, and it’s been difficult to measure success in this hybrid environment.

“We don’t have very much insight into streaming numbers and, even what we do see, it’s not remotely comparable. So in terms of how these movies are profiting or not profiting, the water is very muddy right there,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Box Office Pro, previously told Yahoo Finance.

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The analyst added that it’s tough to pinpoint the impact that a simultaneous streaming release has on box office figures.

Streaming and ‘specialized movies’

Last year, hybrid releases like “Dune” and “Godzilla vs. Kong” performed quite well in theaters, whereas “The Matrix Resurrections” disappointed. Robbins said this suggests that the film might have suffered from other variables outside of its availability on HBO Max (T) — like fan reception following poorly reviewed sequels, or the Omicron variant.

At the moment, the majority of this year’s films have an exclusive, 45-day theatrical window with big titles on deck. These include “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” and “Mission: Impossible 7.”

IMAX’s Gelfond called it “one of the best slates” he’s ever seen.

“The big budget blockbuster movies are going to be theatrical exclusives for a while,” he added.

Box office experts agree, arguing that more art house films and non-blockbuster genres like indies, dramas and musicals may go direct to streaming due to shifting audience demand at the box office.

“The more mature audience that gravitates to those kind of specialized movies have been more reticent to go back to the movie theater,” Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian recently told Yahoo Finance.

In the near term, “we’re going to be living in a world where you have mainly the big blockbusters, franchise films, and superhero films being the bread and butter for the industry,” he added.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is the perfect example of what films work within this pandemic-driven environment. The superhero flick — which crushed box office estimates and delivered the strongest opening weekend numbers of 2021 — has amassed over half a billion in domestic sales, with some analysts predicting a final domestic haul of $750 million.

According to Sony, the vast majority of the film’s moviegoers were under the age of 34.

“That’s going to be the driver of the business…especially during the pandemic. Theaters and studios are really reliant on that crowd showing up, and they’ve shown an eagerness to do so with movies like [‘Spider-Man’],” Robbins added.

Alexandra is a Producer & Entertainment Correspondent at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alliecanal8193

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Kevin Williamson Details His Original Plans for ‘Scream 5’ & ‘Scream 6’! [Interview]

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In case you thought we had exhausted ourselves on all things Scream after spending four hours(!!!) discussing Scream 4 last week, think again! In a special Horror Queers bonus episode, Joe and I have Scream scribe Kevin Williamson on the line in celebration of the new film, which hits theaters today!

The Scream franchise, while beloved, is not without its share of behind-the-scenes drama in the 25 years of its existence. From a rushed production (and script leaks) in Scream 2 to a script that was taken away from him in Scream 4, there are plenty of unanswered questions about the behind-the-scenes workings of the films.

Since this is such a rare opportunity, we decided to ask him some of the questions you’ve been dying to ask him over the years about the Scream franchise, including but not limited to:

What exactly happened with those script leaks during the production of Scream 2?

How did he feel when he first saw Scream 3 (and when did he first see it?)?

(and when did he first see it?)? Which part of his Scream 4 script is he most bummed didn’t make it into the final cut?

Was Robbie really gay?

What part did he play in writing the hospital coda in Scream 4?

And just what were his plans for Scream 5 & Scream 6 had Scream 4 been successful?

In regards to the Scream 5 and Scream 6 plans that never came to be, Williamson reveals that Emma “Jill” Roberts would’ve returned in his original incarnation of a Scream 5 idea.

Williamson explains that concept, “Jill went to college, and then murders started on the campus. And it was a killer who knew she was the killer from the last film. So the killer kept trying to expose her, so she would have to kill to keep it covered up. So it was killer meets killer. And Sidney was a professor at that school.”

“Scream 6 was gonna answer whatever happened between Dewey and Gale,” Williamson continues. “Sidney was in it, but it was more focused on Gale’s storyline.”

Oh, and we also asked Williamson for his spoiler-free thoughts on the latest film so be sure to stick around until the very end to hear that! We’ve got the answers to these questions and more, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the screams!

Scream (2022) sees a new killer don the Ghostface mask twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro. The killer then begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.

Scream is currently in theaters everywhere.