\n<\/p>\n
Conceived as a darkly bloody satire\u00a0of the derivative world of slasher franchises,\u00a0Scream<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is now itself one of the longest running slasher franchises in history. To date, it\u2019s produced seven films and a TV series over 30 years. (For sake of comparison:\u00a0Halloween\u00a0<\/em>was less than 20 years old when the first\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>hit theaters in 1996.) Who was it that said you\u00a0either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a Ghostface?<\/p>\n The Scream\u00a0<\/em>series has mocked almost every conceivable aspect of horror film and fandom \u2014 except the world of development hell, where, ironically, several\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>sequels have spent a significant amount of time. Almost every single movie in the series since\u00a0Scream 2\u00a0<\/em>has premiered in a distinctly different form than its initial concept, as scripts were revised, writers were replaced, endings were reshot, and actors were fired.<\/p>\n Below you\u2019ll find four notable\u00a0Scream<\/em>s that were killed before they could escape into public view, like so many of Ghostface\u2019s victims through the last three decades. (RIP.)<\/p>\n When\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>creator Kevin Williamson<\/a> sold the franchise to Miramax \u2014 back when it was still just an idea of his called\u00a0Scary Movie \u2014\u00a0<\/em>he included outlines\u00a0for multiple sequels. Williamson stuck around for\u00a0Scream<\/em> 2,\u00a0<\/em>but by the time\u00a0Scream 3\u00a0<\/em>came around he was busy on other projects. The\u00a0producers then brought in Ehren Kruger to flesh out Williamson\u2019s outline into a full script, but over the course of development,\u00a0Scream 3\u00a0<\/em>became an entirely different film than Williamson had conceived.<\/p>\n In 2013, Williamson told Entertainment Tonight<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>that in his original Scream 3<\/em> story \u201cthe killers were basically a fanclub of Woodsboro kids that had formed because of\u00a0Stab 1<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Stab 2 …\u00a0<\/em>They were all doing the killings and the big surprise of the movie was when Sidney walked into the house after Ghostface had killed everyone … and they all rose up. None of them were actually dead and they’d planned the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson later repurposed some of his ideas from\u00a0Scream 3\u00a0<\/em>for\u00a0his TV series\u00a0The Following<\/em>, and the killers\u2019 motivations, with some major changes, also became part of\u00a0Scream 4.\u00a0<\/em>But the \u201cfan club\u201d\u00a0idea never made it into a\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>in quite this way.<\/p>\n Scream 4\u00a0<\/em>might have had an even more convoluted development than\u00a0Scream 3<\/em>. Kevin Williamson did write the script for that one \u2014 but then\u00a0his script was heavily rewritten by others before and even during production. The movie\u00a0eventually got a totally different ending than the one Williamson had planned. Williamson\u00a0wanted\u00a0Scream 4\u00a0<\/em>killer Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts) to survive the film, and then to become\u00a0a main character\u00a0in two more sequels that would have formed a kind of trilogy within the broader franchise.<\/p>\n Director Wes Craven eventually shot a new ending with the\u00a0Scream<\/em> legacy heroes finally killing Jill after it initially appears like she\u2019s gotten away with her crimes. (That\u2019s because in the original script she had; the hospital revenge sequence that now concludes Scream 4\u00a0<\/em>was a late addition.)\u00a0In 2022, Williamson told\u00a0Bloody Disgusting<\/a>\u00a0that had Jill survived as he intended,\u00a0Scream 5\u00a0<\/em>would have been about Jill in college.<\/p>\n \u201cThen murders started on campus,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnd 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.\u00a0So it was killer meets killer. And Sidney was a professor at that school.\u201d That\u2019s a fun idea for a sequel!<\/p>\n Then, Williamson said, \u201cScream 6<\/em>\u00a0was gonna answer whatever happened between Dewey and Gale,\u201d with a smaller role for Sidney and bigger parts for Dewey and Gale. But\u00a0Scream 4<\/em> got rewritten, Jill died, and the next\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>sequel didn\u2019t arrive for another\u00a011 years.<\/p>\n When\u00a0Scream VI\u00a0<\/em>did finally\u00a0debut in 2023, it was the first movie in the franchise without its central star, Neve Campbell. In the movie, her absence is explained by characters mentioning that in light of Ghostface\u2019s latest rampage,\u00a0Campbell\u2019s Sidney has gone into hiding in order to keep her family safe.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what we saw after Campbell decided to bow out of the movie after feeling like she was not being \u201cvalued\u201d by the series. \u201cI\u00a0think it’s\u00a0really important for us to be valued\u00a0and to fight to be valued,\u201d she explained<\/a>. \u201cI honestly don’t believe that if I were a man and had done five installments of a huge blockbuster franchise over 25 years, that the number that I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man. And in my soul, I just couldn’t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Scream VI\u00a0<\/em>was so far along in its development by the time Campbell declined to return that the early scripts for the movie\u00a0already included\u00a0her character. HelloSidney.com<\/a>\u00a0has an entire post that details this version of the screenplay and how it differed from the final film; many of the changes are cosmetic (some of\u00a0Sidney\u2019s lines were given to other characters), but most fundamentally the movie would have been truer to the Sidney of earlier\u00a0Scream<\/em>s \u2014 who does not seem like the type to hide from trouble.<\/p>\n In the script, when Sidney learns about Ghostface\u2019s return, she leaves her family and heads to Manhattan, where she helps the younger characters figure out the killer\u2019s identity and defeat him. She would have gotten a scene reuniting with Courteney Cox\u2019s Gale Weathers, and helped defeat the latest Ghostface by dropping\u00a0the same TV on him that she used to kill the first\u00a0Ghostface lo those many years ago. (\u201cSecond time I\u2019ve done that, if you can believe it,\u201d was her scripted one-liner.)<\/p>\n After the success of\u00a0Scream VI<\/em>, producers quickly got to work on a direct continuation of the story. But the\u00a0Scream 7\u00a0<\/em>that in theaters in 2026 is totally different from the one that was first planned three years earlier. Since\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>returned in 2022,\u00a0its overarching story followed sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter, played by actors Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega. (Sam is also the daughter of Billy Loomis, the killer from the original\u00a0Scream<\/em>.)<\/p>\n But then Barrera was fired from\u00a0Scream 7<\/em>, reportedly because of comments she made about the war in Gaza. Then Ortega left the project, supposedly over scheduling issues with her\u00a0TV series,\u00a0Wednesday.\u00a0<\/em>With both of his leads gone, director Christopher Landon then dropped out of the project as well.<\/p>\nKevin Williamson\u2019s Scream 3<\/em><\/h3>\n
The Original Versions of\u00a0Scream 5 & 6<\/em><\/h3>\n
Scream VI<\/em> Before Neve Campbell\u2019s Departure<\/h3>\n
The Original Scream 7<\/em> <\/a>plan<\/h3>\n