Original Scream 7 directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly and detailed their unrealized vision for the horror sequel.
Bettinelli-Olpin said she wanted to test the limits of “how hard you can go” with “Scream 7,” but that she and Gillette were unable to progress that far in development because she left the series to direct the 2024 vampire thriller “Abigail.”
“We had left to do ‘Abigail’ before that, so I never read the draft of ‘Scream 7,’ which we were going to do,” Bettinelli-Olpin said. “The thoughts we had in our heads about ‘Scream 7’ were, ‘How far can we go with this?’ That was something we talked about a lot. For us, the idea was always that if “Scream 6” was like a secret feel-good movie, “Scream 7” was going to be a mess. That was the limit we had reached so far. ”
Gillette added, “Given the scope of the story by going to New York, the other thing we talked about, just Matt and I, and by the way, not with the screenwriters, was, ‘How do we do a reversal of 7?'” Reduce it to something super specific, almost continuous, minute by minute. But other than our own foolish thoughts, we knew nothing about the plan beyond that there would be another one. ”
Scream 7 follows Neve Campbell’s original series protagonist Sidney Prescott, who moves to the small town of Pine Grove in search of a quiet life with his daughter, but Ghostface returns and destroys everything. Campbell will co-star with original cast members Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Matthew Lillard, as well as Isabel May, Jasmine Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, Joel McHale, and McKenna Grace.
“Scream 7” opens in theaters Friday, and Paramount and Spyglass are expecting a $60 million opening weekend, but getting the movie off the ground hasn’t been easy. In 2024, series stars Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, as well as director Christopher Landon, left the series. Scream author Kevin Williamson was hired to replace Landon as director. Additionally, Campbell left Scream 6 due to pay disputes, and the producers had to pay him $7 million for his return.
