Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson encouraged directors of new sequel to take ‘big swings’
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The directors and executive producer of the horror franchise’s fifth installment tell EW about risk-taking and paying homage to Wes Craven.
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It is no real spoiler to say that the new Scream film (out in cinemas Jan. 14) takes big swings when it comes to some of the beloved franchise’s characters. Executive producer Chad Villella explains that the jaw-dropping turns were a crucial part of the original script, by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick.
“Those big swings were definitely present in the script,” says Villella. “As you’re getting closer and closer to production, and the rubber’s about to meet the road, everyone always voices their doubts and is like, ‘Oh, are we sure this the right choice?’ But for us, those swings, they’re so essential and so integral to what happens in the story. They’re really consequential. All of the really big turning points for us, they’re valuable to what the movie is and it just wouldn’t be the same experience if you removed them. It’s sort of a house of cards and really that is what was so clear to us about the script as we were reading it. We loved the risks that it took and wanted to make sure that we protected those at all costs.”
Co-director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin reveals that another of the new film’s executive producers, original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, encouraged such risk-taking.
“There’s a swing in the movie that Kevin Williamson flagged in pre-production,” says Bettinelli-Olpin, a member of the Radio Silence collective along with his fellow Scream director Tyler Gillett and Villella. “[He said], ‘This is the only thing that doesn’t quite feel like it’s in a Scream movie, which is why I think it’s the absolute thing you need to make sure stays in the script.’”
Below, Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, and Villella talk about paying homage to Wes Craven (who directed the first four films in the series) and the future of the Scream franchise.
Scream 2022 Scream 2022 | Credit: BROWNIE HARRIS/ Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The new Scream has been getting great reactions. That must feel pretty good.
TYLER GILLETT: Yeah, I think it’s more than we ever expected. You always make something hoping that it connects with people and you’re white-knuckling it right up to the moment that people’s opinions are out in the world. We are beyond thrilled [about the reactions] and so excited for audiences now to get to have the experience.
Your 2019 movie Ready or Not was a success, but what was the process of auditioning for the Scream gig?
CHAD VILLELLA: Well, it’s funny you bring up Ready or Not because Ready or Not kind of was our audition. Working [on the film] with the team at Project X — William Sherak, Paul Neinstein, and James Vanderbilt — that was very nice and they brought us in to Gary Barber at Spyglass. They said, “We think you’re the guys to help us make this movie,” and we couldn’t be more thankful for them doing that.
Scream 2022 Scream 2022 | Credit: BROWNIE HARRIS/ Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group
What was it like reading the script? And how similar was that screenplay to what people will see in cinemas?
MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We went in to read the script and we took probably two-and-a-half, three hours to do it, because it was so good and we didn’t want to miss anything. It read like you were seeing the movie in the most realistic way. What people will see is pretty much what was on the page then. We changed some things out of necessity, but at the end of the day, the script we read and the movie you’re seeing are very very similar. They really wrote a great script.
The movie goes deep in the weeds with the horror genre. I thought I was having a stroke when some characters started discussing “elevated horror.” It was like someone had scooped out my brain and put it on a screen.
GILLETT: That’s how we felt reading it. We’ve always been reticent to step into a franchise because it’s so hard to create new tracks in something, especially when it’s been done so successfully. Obviously, we’re fans of the original four movies and all of Wes’ work, there was a sort of added layer of pressure with this. So we went in to reading that script and we were so blown away by the multiple layers of commentary in the movie and how, like you said, it felt like Guy and Jamie were inside our brains. There were moments when we were literally cheering when we reading the script.
The Scream series has been very well curated over the years compared to some other franchises. Was that an advantage or did it make your mission more daunting?
VILLELLA: It was an absolute advantage dipping into the Scream lineage and the way that worlds were connected through all four films. The conversation we all had, and Guy and Jamie [dealt with] wonderfully in the script, was, what is it like ten years later? Like, let’s just go and lean into the real world of Woodsboro, and what it is like ten years later, and hopefully continue this wonderful storyline that Wes and Kevin Williamson created 25 years ago.
Scream 2022 Credit: BROWNIE HARRIS/ Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group
As Scream fans, what was it like to step on to set and find yourself directing Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott?
BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Surreal. Just very, very unbelievable. Neve was invaluable in the pre-production process, kind of keeping it within the guard rails of what Scream is. She had a lot of great thoughts that all got worked into the script. Then, on set, Neve, Courteney (Cox), David (Arquette), they really helped guide us along the way in terms of what it was like during the original movies. We tried very hard to kind of marry our process to the process that they all went through in the first four movies, with Wes Craven, and the father-like figure that he was on set.
The new Scream is dedicated to Wes. Could you talk about how you pay homage to him in the film?
BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Our starting point was this has to be, on some level, a love letter to Wes Craven, Scream, and his other work. I would say throughout the making of the movie and within the finished product itself there’s so many little nods to Wes, there’s big nods to Wes. At the end of the day, the entire thing is ultimately a love letter to Wes from us. He’s one of the greatest directors, period, of his generation. To go into the movie already as fans, I think we all came out on the other side even bigger fans because we’ve gotten to know people [who knew him]. Everything we’ve heard and everyone we talked to about him has just been, he was the nicest, most supportive, loving man. So it’s daunting to pick up where he left off on Scream but it also was a real blessing for us.
Would you gentlemen be up for making another Scream film?
VILLELLA: I mean, we love Scream. This is why we’re filmmakers, we love being a part of this franchise. If everyone decides to have us back we would happily talk about the story and where it could possibly go.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Watch the trailer for the new Scream film below.
For interviews with cast and crew, behind-the-scenes tidbits and photos, and much more, pick up a copy of Entertainment Weekly’s Guide to Scream, available online or wherever magazines are sold.
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Scream (2022) Review: A Horror Film About Horror Films About Horror Films
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Do You Like Scary Movies About Scary Movies Laughing at Scary Movies? Then You’ll Love the New ‘Scream’
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There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie: You can never have sex, never drink or do drugs, never say you’ll “be right back.” But there are also certain rules that characters have to adhere to in order to navigate a meta-horror movie, like: Be extremely well-versed in the rules of horror movies, especially the classic slashers (your Halloweens, your Friday the 13ths, your Nightmare on Elm Streets). You should be enough of a fan to recognize potentially stabby situations — don’t go in the basement or the woods! avoid bloody valentines, terror trains and prom nights! — but not so much of a fan that you put on creepy masks and murder your classmates. And if you’ve lived through a franchise’s first entry, make sure you watch the movies that exploit your “real-life” trauma playing within the movieverse you’re in, just in case art imitates life imitating art imitating…say, just how deep does this rabbit hole go?
A quarter of a century ago, Scream winked and nudged and butchered its way into pop culture by assuming folks were fluent enough in genre conventions to know how those movies worked. It’s a hell of a tightrope act that screenwriter Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven nimbly tiptoed, balancing in-jokes for a generation raised on VCR horror binges while still delivering thrills, chills and adrenaline rushes. Even in a decade characterized by pomo self-consciousness and mondo meta virtuosity (the ’60s got Godard and Dylan, but the ’90s gave us Tarantino and Beck), this 1996 hit relied as much on a shared knowingness as it did that signature Ghostface mask. And when the series started inserting their own reflective rip-offs within the franchise itself. i.e. the Stab movies that dramatized those horrific teen massacres seen in Scream, you got a bonus M.C. Escher buzz — the joy of watching a slasher eat its own tail.
Fast-forward a few decades, and brand-name nostalgia is even bigger business; the nature of franchising and fandom, however, has changed. Scream 2022 is nothing if not extremely up-to-date, knowing very well that it’s re-entering a poposphere in which the conversation is less “how cool were those movies!?” and more “how can I keep permanently reliving my childhood?” After a suitably snarky update to the original opening — another phone call in which the voice of Roger L. Jackson sinisterly asks a babysitter if she like scary movies…only now they’re arguing about the merits of “elevated horror” — word goes out that there’s a new Ghostface killer in Woodsboro. A potential victim, Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), ends up in the hospital. Her long-estranged sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera), rushes back to her old home town to take care of her. They both have a connection to that first wave of killings way back in the day, though only one of them knows it.
Tara’s high school friends, made up of the usual assortment of pop-savvy jocks, geeks, kooks and mall-goths, are ready to play amateur detectives and find out who’s behind the Gen-Z Ghostface masks. Ditto Richie (The Boys’ Jack Quaid), Sam’s boyfriend who’s along for the ride. Meanwhile, a visit to the ex-lawman Dewey Riley (David Arquette) after more bodies drop prompts him to reach out to both Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), now a bigshot TV anchor in New York, and former final-girl extraordinaire Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). It’s around this point that the smartest member of this would-be Scooby Gang, played by Yellowjackets‘ Jasmin Savoy Brown, figures out that these aren’t just copycat killings. They’re all in the middle of a “requel.”
Yes, a requel — the distinctly 21st century Frankenstein’s monster of a franchise entry in which legacy characters from beloved series pair up with fresh blood in the name of breathing new life into an old but highly beloved intellectual property. It’s somehow both a reboot and a sequel, a “return to basics” and a reset after diminishing returns. If your film is part of a series [cough] but you ditch the numbers after the title [cough, cough] and simply name your new entry after the first movie [cough, COUGH, sputter, dead], then you may be a requel. God forbid you anger those who worship the brand like a religion, and feel that those who somehow mess with the integrity of such canon fodder be subject to a campaign of online harassment, name-calling and worse. You might get Mary Sue-d.
And while it may be spoilery to say much else, it’s safe to note that this type of toxic fandom is exactly what Scream ’22 is sharpening its knives for as it goes in for the meta-kill. It’s a smart way of tackling a topic that’s plagued both long-in-the-tooth franchises and relatively new cinematic universes — that some sort of purity of essence must be maintained, and that fans are entitled to protect their cherished memories because, say, tweaking a detail or letting a POC character enter their pop culture sandbox is a personal attack. And the concept of taking such folks to task acts as a through line to the countless in-house callbacks and references to other movies, even when this particular house of mirrors feels like it’s about to collapse in on itself. It’s hard to say what the directorial duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (the same guys who gave us the equally cheeky Ready or Not) and screenwriters James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick (Castle Rock) might have at stake here. But they all definitely have an axe to grind, and are more than willing to take said axe to a slaughterfest set on sacred genre ground.
Do you like scary movies about scary movies that somehow laugh at yet pay reverence to other scary movies? Then you will love this new Scream. Do you prefer your horror to not be so back-pattingly clever about all of that, and to remove tongues from mouths rather than place them firmly in cheeks? Then you’re shit outta luck here, my friend, though that’s been some purists’ beef with the series since Drew Barrymore first put the Jiffy-Pop on the stove and picked up her phone. It also runs out of steam long before it runs out the clock, which has also been a staple of the series as well. Yet you have to applaud how boldly this fifth entry tries to flip the bird to the entire rinse-repeat-regurgitate idea of trapping film series in amber, while also delivering you the thrill of the familiar and those dopamine bumps that come with the pang of recognition. It wants to eat its cake and stab it repeatedly, too. And if you don’t like it, watch out. They might come after you in the next requel.