The fate of the Scream franchise is still hanging in the balance following the departure of the seventh installment’s two leading actresses, Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, as well as its newbie director, Christopher Landon. While the production team is spinning their wheels on what to do (if anything), original cast member Skeet Ulrich revealed what the initial plan was for Scream 7. The actor first appeared in the movie that started it all – Wes Anderson’s 1996 horror masterpiece Scream, as Billy Loomis, one of the first killers to don the Ghostface mask and get to stabbin (sorry if that was a spoiler, but the movie came out almost three decades ago). After his character’s death, it was presumed that Ulrich’s time with the film series was over. That is until directorial duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett resurrected it in 2022.
The actor then appeared as Billy but in a non-corporeal way, speaking to his daughter, Sam (Barrera) from beyond the grave via hallucinations. Sam struggled with her parentage during the fifth and sixth movies with many, including Ulrich, wondering if she would ever fully turn to the dark side. In an interview with Screen Rant, Ulrich revealed that a three-film character arc was always in the works for Sam as she came to accept her father’s horrific past.
“I was hoping for exactly that, and that’s sort of the idea that was pitched to me a couple years ago . That it was a three-movie arc , with that in mind. Now, I never saw any of the drafts of seven or anything that… And I don’t know, I mean, it’s possible that it didn’t include any of that as well. But yeah, that was my hope is that if it was going to mean anything, that it directly impacted the plot.”
The Future of ‘Scream’ Without Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega
While the first four titles in the greatest horror franchise of all time followed Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott as she dodged and weaved herself away from Ghostface’s stinging blade, the 2022 revamp picked up with sisters, Sam (Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Ortega). While beloved characters like Sidney, Dewey (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) were also involved in the movies, Sam and Tara took center stage along with their besties, Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks (Mason Gooding). Now that Barrera and Ortega are out, it isn’t completely clear what the next chapter of Scream will entail or if it will even continue.
Campbell turned down a role in Scream VI due to payment discrepancies, giving her an advantage over the studio should they press her to return for Scream 7. The same can be said for Cox and even the reintroduced Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) and Patrick Dempsey’s Mark Kincaid.
Though we’ll likely never see what Sam’s brush with villainy could have become, we at least know a little bit more about what the creative team was cooking up thanks to Ulrich’s comments. Scream VI is now streaming on Paramount+.
via Collider