The co-directors of last year’s high-concept horror flick ‘Ready or Not’, Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, are set to tackle the remake of ‘Scream’. Chad Villela, their partner in the filmmaking collective Radio Silence, will serve as a producer. The reboot hails from Spyglass Media and Lantern Entertainment, who acquired the rights to the ‘Scream’ franchise after buying the assets of Weinstein Co. following a bankruptcy sale.
It is not yet known if the new ‘Scream’ is a complete do-over or if it will continue the story from the originals.
The first ‘Scream’ was released in 1996 and was directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film gave the horror genre a much-needed jolt and led to other similar franchises including ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and the ‘Scary Movie’ parody series. The first ‘Scream’ made over $100 million at the box office and was praised for directly poking fun at horror movie tropes. There have been three sequels with the most recent, ‘Scream 4,’ arriving fairly recently in 2011.
Neve Campbell has headed up the cast of all of the movies, and David Arquette and Courtney Cox have co-starred in each. (Arquette and Cox even got married for a while after the first movie.) The voice of the killer, popularly known as “Ghostface,” has been provided by Roger Jackson in each movie.
The first film also co-starred Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich, while Drew Barrymore appeared in a cameo as the first victim of Ghostface. Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps made a similar cameo in ‘Scream 2’, and Heather Graham did the same in ‘Scream 3’. The casts of the first three movies are basically a who’s who of ’90s stars: Patrick Dempsey, Carrie Fisher, Scott Foley, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, Jenny McCarthy, Laurie Metcalf, Emily Mortimer, Jerry O’Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, and Patrick Warburton. ‘Scream 4’ featured a new generation of young stars, including Kristen Bell, Alison Brie, Lucy Hale, Hayden Panettiere, Anna Paquin, and Emma Roberts.
MTV also created a ‘Scream’ TV series which was an anthology with different casts for each of its three seasons. The show aired in 2015, 2016, and 2019.
‘Ready or Not’ was a sleeper hit, grossing $57 million at the box office, on a $6 million budget. It was praised for its mixture of horror and comedy, something that the ‘Scream’ franchise is also known for, so this could be a perfect fit.
Are you looking forward to a new version of ‘Scream’?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
