The ‘Scream’ franchise was a big deal just over a decade ago. The original film by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson still stands as one of the best horror movies of the time. ‘Scream’ took the basic idea of a slasher movie about a killer hunting down innocent (and not so innocent) teenagers and put the usual tropes to the test with great effect. The first two sequels tried to continue that formula to lesser degree. After ‘Scream 3’, the franchise vanished from theaters.
Never one to let a good idea stay dead, the Weinstein Company tried to revive the franchise in 2011 after an eleven year absence from theaters. I guess we’ve got to give them credit for not just rebooting the series from the beginning as too many other Hollywood exec would do. Still, ‘Scream 4’ didn’t really cut it, bringing in only $40 million and garnering a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, Harvey Weinstein, said he was happy with the take and some very preliminary work was being done on a fifth and sixth sequel to ‘Scream’. There’s no word yet on those two sequels but since original ‘Scream’ co-creator Kevin Williamson said back in February that he’d have nothing to do with them, chances are that they won’t be made.
Instead, the Weinsteins are going a different route and developing ‘Scream’ as a television series for MTV, TV Line reports. At this time, the project is in the VERY early stages but we do know that Tony DiSanto (‘Teen Wolf’) and Liz Gateley (‘The Hard Time of RJ Berger’) will be executive producing the new ‘Scream’ series. There’s no word if original creators Craven or Williamson will have anything to do with the project. Williamson is currently working on some television gigs of his own with both CW’s ‘Vampire Diaries’ and Fox’s new serial killer show ‘The Following’ hitting screens in the 2012-13 season.
MTV, which has mainly been into reality TV tripe like ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Jersey Shore’ has had some success with scripted television horror with last years reimagining of the 1985 comedy ‘Teen Wolf’ as an angsty drama series. ‘Teen Wolf’ is set to return for a second season and it looks like MTV is hoping to catch that horror magic again with ‘Scream’.
What do you think? Will the quirky meta-universe of ‘Scream’ work as a television series? I think if MTV hires some smart writers and they question the cliches of television horror the same way that the original ‘Scream’ did with films, it has hope…. but I’m not holding my breath.
