‘Scream’ Terrorizes Box Office With $3.5M in Previews
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Scream made plenty of noise as it opened in select theaters Thursday night, grossing a strong $3.5 million in Thursday previews despite challenges posed by the omicron variant and another surge in COVID-19 cases.
The slasher pic began rolling out at 7 p.m. local time across the country in roughly 3,000 locations. By Friday morning, it will be playing in more than 3,666 theaters.
The reboot — featuring original Scream stars including Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell alongside franchise newcomers — hopes to transform into the first box office hit of 2022.
The slasher film opens more than 25 years after Wes Craven’s Scream turned into a horror sensation. The new film, from Paramount and Spyglass, is the fifth title in the series and a direct sequel to 2011’s Scream 4. It is also the first not to be directed by Wes Craven, who passed away in 2015.
Instead, Matt Bettinello-Olpin and Tyler Gillett share directing duties. This time, the Scream team sees franchise mainstays Cox and Campbell, along with Marty Shelton, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Heather Matarazzo and Roger L. Jackson reprise their roles, while newcomers include Jenna Ortega, Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Dylan Minnette and Jack Quaid.
Scream is widely expected to be a boost for the box office over the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend with a four-day gross as high as $30 million or more. (Horror and superheroes are the two genres that have fared the best throughout the pandemic era, as they attract moviegoers ages 18-34, the demo most willing to return to the mulitplex.)
Last year, Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II took in $4.9 million in Thursday previews; ditto for Universal’s Halloween Kills. Both were follow-ups to more recent hits. Scream came in well ahead of Candyman, another pandemic horror release that grossed $1.9 million in previews. In terms of pre-pandemic films, M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass earned $3.7 million in previews in early 2019.
Scream follows a new Ghostface-masked killer who pursues a group of teenagers trying to learn about the town’s past.
Scream Writer Confirms Original Plans for Scream 5 & 6
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It’s been over ten years since Scream 4 hit theaters, but the fifth installment is finally here. The new movie, which is simply titled Scream, was released last night and it’s been met with mostly positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. The new horror film is currently up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 76% critics score and an 89% audience score. The new movie is the first of the franchise that wasn’t helmed by the late, great Wes Craven. Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett stepped in with original Scream writer Kevin Williamson producing. In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, Williamson revealed the original plans for the fifth and even sixth Scream movies. At one point, Scream 4’s Jill (Emma Roberts) was supposed to return.
“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 [Neve Campbell] was a professor at that school,” Williamson shared. “Scream 6 was gonna answer whatever happened between Dewey [David Arquette] and Gale [Courteney Cox] … Sidney was in it, but it was more focused on Gale’s storyline.”
During a recent virtual reunion event, Williamson spoke about doing Craven proud with the new film.
“I had been really apprehensive about doing one of these films without Wes,” the writer noted. “The directors actually sent me a letter when the offer was sent and said the reason they are directors is because of Wes. So they’re even so honored to even be asked to make this film, and that they’re such huge fans of him and the films themselves, and of the cast, and that they really wanted to honor his voice, which I really, really believe they did.”
In addition to Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette, Scream will see the return of Scream 4’s Marley Shelton as Deputy Judy Hicks. Jack Quaid leads an extended roster of newcomers that will appear in the film alongside Melissa Barrera, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Mason Gooding, Kyle Gallner, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mikey Madison.
What are your thoughts on the original idea for the new Scream? Do you wish Emma Roberts would have returned or do you prefer the new story? Tell us in the comments!
The new Scream is now playing in theaters.
The Scream cast takes us behind the scenes on the new, self-aware slasher
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What’s your favorite scary movie? Chances are that Scream – Wes Craven’s genre-bending, witty, self-aware slasher – is high on your list. And while the franchise has been absent from the big screen since 2011’s Scream 4, the fifth installment, simply titled Scream, brings back Ghostface with a brutal, bloody bang.
While legacy characters Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) return, there are a whole host of new characters in the spotlight. Center stage is Sam Carpenter (In the Heights star Melissa Barrera) who returns to the Ghostface-plagued town of Woodsboro when her younger sister Tara (You’s Jenna Ortega) is viciously attacked by the masked killer – and Sam’s handling this nightmare “very stupidly,” according to Barrera.
“It’s the first rule of horror movies,” she tells GamesRadar+ with a laugh over Zoom. “That’s what’s brilliant about Scream, is that all the characters are very aware about the rules of horror movies, and they’re talking like we as an audience talk, like ‘Oh, why is she doing that? Why is she going to look there, she’s going to die’ and yet they still do those things.
“She’s going into la boca del lobo, as we say in Spanish, the mouth of the wolf. She’s going straight in asking for it, basically. But she’s a big sister and she would do anything for family, and that’s something that I can relate to, because I’m a big sister too. I have three younger sisters. So I can understand the dumb move, and honestly, we wouldn’t have a movie if it weren’t for that.”
Joining Sam on her trip back to Woodsboro is her boyfriend Richie Kirsch, played by The Boys’ Jack Quaid, and he’s also a little out of his depth. “I do love playing audience surrogate characters, because I just get to essentially befriend the audience, in a way, and be one of them going through what it would be like if one of them was going through this experience,” says the actor of his character. “Honestly, I just had a blast. It was awesome.”
“It’s happening again”
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
Ghostface’s modus operandi in Scream, co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, is the same as ever: Tara gets a creepy phone call from that distinctive, terrifying voice, and is then tormented by the knife-wielding killer before the bloodshed begins.
“It was really amazing, because they actually got [Roger L.] Jackson on the phone, so I was able to speak with the real Ghostface, and that was my first day on set,” Ortega says of filming Tara’s ordeal. “So it was my first experience of the Scream franchise, and suddenly, everything felt very real, and I felt immense pressure to do the best I possibly could, especially seeing all of the incredible Ghostface phone calls I’ve seen before me.
“But it also was exciting to put myself in my character’s shoes and see what my reaction would be as her. Also, I love to do stunts, and I love it when things get bloody and messy, the way horror is supposed to. So for me, it was a dream scene.”
Sam doesn’t have to face Ghostface alone, though. Joining her in the struggle are Scream legends Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, with Campbell, Cox, and Arquette back in the roles.
“Watching them work, watching them so seamlessly slip right back into those characters that they played for 25 years was fascinating and thrilling to watch,” says Barrera. “But also, all the knowledge that they bring with them of the first four movies, the stories that they told us of anecdotes that they’ve gone through, from when they first met in the first movie, how it was, how they didn’t expect it to become such a huge hit. And just seeing their professionalism, it really was a life lesson.”
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
“Neve at one point did say one concrete piece of advice, which was just have fun,” adds Quaid. “Like, ‘This is such a fun movie, and I want you guys to relish this experience as much as you can.’ And that’s what we needed to hear, because we shot this thing in the middle of a pandemic. We were all so lucky to be there working on something we cared about, working on something we thought was awesome.”
The trio aren’t the only ones who are back. Also returning is Marley Shelton as Judy Hicks, last seen as the deputy with a big crush on Dewey in Scream 4.
“Judy has been promoted,” Shelton says. “She’s gone from Deputy Judy Hicks to Sheriff Judy Hicks. And she has a 16 year old son. She’s a single mom, we’re never sure exactly who the father is, and what that story is. A lot has happened to Judy, since [Scream] 4.”
Judy’s son, named Wes Hicks, is played by Thirteen Reasons Why’s Dylan Minnette. “I would describe Wes as a good son, he’s a good boy,” says the actor. “He really respects his mother, and he really takes her very seriously. He doesn’t like to let her know that, but it definitely reflects with his friends, because he’s trying to protect his friends. Judy is very protective of him. Wes takes on a lot of characteristics of his mom. He’s a deeply caring person, he cares about the people around him. Wes is the nice guy of this movie.”
Knowing the rules
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
This wouldn’t be Scream without a meta, self-referential approach to the genre. Already in the series, we’ve been inctoduced to the in-universe Stab franchise, based on the Woodsboro murders (AKA the events of the Scream movies). Then there’s the franchise’s heavy focus on the rules of horror, sequels, threequels, and so on.
In the original Scream, Jamie Kennedy’s Randy Meeks knew the horror movie rules backwards – though it couldn’t save him in the sequel. This time around, Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy Meeks-Martin is picking up that baton.
“Scream is very smart, very self-aware, good at doing some callbacks but also remaining new and fresh,” says Brown. “And I am very much a part of that.”
“You are that in spades, mind you,” adds Mason Gooding, who plays Mindy’s twin brother Chad Meeks-Martin. “To echo Randy’s sentiment, you embody the rules of surviving a horror movie.”
Whether that encyclopedic horror knowledge will save the twins remains to be seen, as getting through these movies alive is no easy task. There’s a killer on the loose, and just as with the previous installments, we don’t know who’s lurking under the Ghostface mask. On more than one occasion, it’s been two killers wreaking havoc. The only clue we have is the tagline to the new movie: it’s always someone you know. And to keep the secrecy at a maximum, even members of the new movie’s cast have no idea of the killer’s true identity.
“It was a pretty unusual experience, I don’t know if we will ever have that experience again, doing a project where nobody really knows how it’s going to end, and where there’s different versions of the script,” says Mikey Madison, who plays Amber Freeman, a close friend of Tara’s. “[It’s a] pretty strange, interesting thing, I think it really emphasizes that whodunnit situation in real life. So I think that really translated to the film as well.”
Naturally, not knowing the killer’s identity meant things got meta for the cast. “It made it feel like the movie was real life, because we’d go get dinner and we’d be like, ‘Who do you think it is? Who do you think it is?’” Brown says. “And a couple people knew before other people knew, and it made the scenes feel much more alive.”
Fresh blood
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
Scream has all the hallmarks of, well, a Scream movie then, but don’t expect it to be exactly the same as what’s come before.
“It honors the original story, because we have the legacy cast,” says Sonia Ammar, who plays Liv McKenzie. “But it also adds a fresh, new take to it and meshes the legacy with that new cast and fresh blood, and makes it exciting both for people who’ve grown up loving the franchise and are big fans of it, and also people who’ve never seen it or are new to the Scream world, [who] I think are going to really enjoy it and fall in love with the story and all the characters – or hate them!”
Shelton agrees. “It’s certainly honoring the legacy, and in step with the legacy, but with the infusion of a new cast and our directors adding their own touches. It definitely has a fresh take on it, as well.”
Scream walks that tightrope between old and new, similar to how other famous franchises have done recently. Indeed, the horror landscape today looks crowded with reboots and sequels – last year alone brought Halloween Kills, a new Candyman, and a Chucky TV show – but there’s a very good reason this film stands apart from the rest.
“Well, none of them are Scream,” says Brown. “Scream was the first and Scream was the best, and that holds up today.”
The film self-consciously positions itself as a “requel” (that’s reboot/sequel), which, as Gooding explains, just makes sense for the franchise. “It’s funny, we draw [on] a lot of perception about other requel or reboot franchises, but I feel like it’s the nature of Scream, and the satirical elements present in it, that it’s natural and organic within our movie to point out different tropes.”
“It’s so self-aware in a very funny way,” Brown adds. “Very of the moment, while remaining timeless, which is why you can watch the first Scream and the jokes hold up. It’s just as good as it was then.”
But as much as Scream is a fresh take on the franchise, it hasn’t lost sight of what came before. The film is dedicated to Craven, who died in 2015. Shelton worked with him on Scream 4, his last movie, and believes the new film is a worthy continuation.
“The filmmakers went to great lengths to continue his legacy and continue what he started, which was so groundbreaking, this really unique tone of being self-referencing, and terrifying, and funny, and with wild characters, and there was just nothing quite like it when the first one came out,” she says. “And Matt and Tyler, our directors, they’re great students of horror, they’re passionate about horror, and they really wanted to make Wes proud.”
Scream hits theaters this January 14. In the meantime, check out our guide to the best horror movies of all time for the ultimate scary movie marathon.
The Unexpected Gift of ‘Scream 4’! [Horror Queers Podcast]
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F*ck with the Original / Hayden Panettiere Is Always Right.
It just wouldn’t be a new year without Scream, right? After celebrating the OG Scream on its 25th anniversary back in December (along with seasonal treats like Batman Returns, Fear No Evil, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Witchboard‘s 35th anniversary), Trace and I are FINALLY discussing one of our fave meta films. And we had so much to say, we had to break it into 2 (!) episodes!
In Scream 4 (2011), writer Kevin Williamson returns to the franchise and Wes Craven directs one last time as Sidney (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro as a new slate of murders begin. While Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) tries to dissuade his wife Gale (Courteney Cox) to stay out of the investigation, high schoolers Jill (Emma Roberts), Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), Trevor (Nico Tortorella), Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin) are caught in the cross-hairs of a new killing spree.
So which one (or two) of them is the murderer?
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.
Episode 159 – Scream 4 (2011)
Part 1
This is not f*cking Trevor, but it is a new year and that means we’re covering another Scream film! To kick off our fourth year(!!!), we’re finally (finally!) covering Wes Craven’s Scream 4 (2011) in a discussion that proved so big we had to split it in two!
Join us as we travel back to Woodsboro to discuss the troubled production (Weinstein woes, rewrites, reshoots, etc.) before Trace’s better half Ari Drew pops in to discuss the ins & outs of one of the screenplay’s early drafts.
Plus: we rake some of Scream 4‘s harshest critics across the coals, review some of those last-minute casting changes and discuss the reappraisal that the film has seen over the past few years.
Part 2
Ready for seconds? In Part 2 of our super-sized discussion on Scream 4, we are going through the iconic film beat by beat and deleted scene by deleted scene.
Expect plenty of praise for the women: Marley Shelton, Alison Brie, Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell, Hayden Panettiere, and, of course, Emma Roberts, who absolutely steals the show as Jill Roberts.
Plus: our reactions to the increased gore, Joe’s continued disdain for Britt Robertson, Trace’s fave Ghostface & Jill line readings, debates about Robbie’s queerness and why this film is the gift that just keeps giving.
Cross out Scream 4!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re kicking off a new series called “under seen or underrated” with Canadian rape revenge/exploitation film American Mary (2012). CW: sexual assault & torture
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 156+ hours of additional content! This month, we’re covering the new Scream (2022), visually impaired thriller See For Me and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Plus: the results of the 2021 Hereditaries, our version of the horror Oscars, and an audio commentary on last year’s delightful Psycho Goreman!
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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