Spyglass Media and Paramount once intended to make a Scream 7 that would have starred Scream (2022) and Scream VI leads Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, with Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon at the helm. But then Ortega allegedly asked for a substantial pay raise – and as we saw when Neve Campbell dropped out of Scream VI due to a pay dispute, these pay issues don’t tend to work out. Then Barrera was fired from the project after comments she made about the Israel-Hamas war didn’t go over well with executives at Spyglass. Landon dropped out the of the project soon after. So Scream 7 has been re-developed, Campbell has signed on to return as franchise heroine Sidney Prescott, back in the lead role, while Kevin Williamson, who wrote the screenplay for the original Scream, directs the film from a screenplay by 2022’s Scream and Scream VI writer Guy Busick, who crafted the story with his co-writer on the fifth and sixth films, James Vanderbilt. (Vanderbilt is also a producer on the most recent sequels.) If the original plan had stayed on track, Skeet Ulrich was expected to appear in the film, just as he appeared in Scream (2022) and Scream VI – and during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ulrich implied that Barrera’s character was going to turn out to be the killer this time around!
Loomis bloodline
Skeet Ulrich played Billy Loomis in the original Scream, a character who was revealed to be one of the Ghostface killers. Billy didn’t survive that film – but the character Melissa Barrera played in the last two movies was his daughter, Sam. She kept seeing hallucinations of him, allowing Ulrich to reprise his role decades later. The hallucinations would have continued in Scream 7 if Barrera returned… and it sounds like they were going to push her over the edge.
Ulrich told Entertainment Weekly, “When we talked about coming back for 5, it was a three-picture arc for Billy Loomis to slowly turn his daughter into the killer. Obviously, those things didn’t pan out, given certain things that happened.“
Ulrich has previously confirmed that he is not in Scream 7 and doesn’t know what the new story is, but “I used to know what the seventh was going to be and it was really, really interesting. Now I have no clue.“
Sam as the killer
Although Barrera was once quoted as saying, “It would be my dream for Sam to be Ghostface,” actually going through with making the heroine of the last two movies the killer in the trilogy capper seems like it would have been a bad move. Maybe it’s better that things ended for her character where they did, with her seemingly rejecting her father’s legacy in the final moments of Scream VI and dropping his Ghostface mask on the street.
Scream 7 cast
Neve Campbell is joined in the cast by Isabel May of the Yellowstone prequel 1883, who plays Sidney’s daughter Tatum; Mckenna Grace of the Ghostbusters franchise, Grace’s Ghostbusters co-star Celeste O’Connor, Gen V‘s Asa Germann, The Fabelmans‘ Sam Rechner, Pitch Perfect‘s Anna Camp, Riverdale‘s Mark Consuelos, fellow franchise star Courteney Cox, who reprises the role of reporter / author Gale Weathers, Joel McHale (Community) as Sidney’s husband Mark Evans, and Ethan Embray (The Devil’s Candy). Although two of the “core four” characters established in the previous two movies are no longer around, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown are back as Chad Meeks-Martin and Mindy Meeks-Martin.
Also in the cast are Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley, who played Ghostface killers in the original Scream and Scream 3, respectively, and did not appear to make it out of those movies alive. David Arquette is back as the dearly departed Dewey, who exited the world of the living in the fifth movie.
Scream 7 is set to reach theatres on February 27, 2026. Are you looking forward to the movie – and would you rather see a version that featured Sam as the killer? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
