‘Never thought it would be a hit’: Scream writer directs film franchise for the first time

PARIS – When he sat down to write the first Scream film, which was released 30 years ago, horror movies were out of fashion and aspiring Hollywood creative Kevin Williamson had low expectations.

“I never thought it would be a hit, actually. I was just trying to get a job. I was just trying to write a script to get noticed by Hollywood so that I’d get hired to write another movie,” the 60-year-old said.

“And I just wrote what I love: I love horror films.”

When Scream came out in 1996, directed by the late American film-maker Wes Craven, it sparked a host of copycat slasher movies and has gone on to become one of the most successful horror franchises in the history of cinema.

The white mask of the Ghostface killer has also become a pop culture reference.

The opening scene – featuring its signature mix of fear and dark humour with American actress Drew Barrymore, the film’s biggest star who is killed within 12 minutes – is considered by many as one of the most memorable openings in the whole genre.

Williamson, who is directing the upcoming Scream 7 after a hugely troubled lead-up, took his original inspiration from a real-life serial killer who murdered four students in Florida in 1990.

“I just got so scared that I spawned the show,” he said.

Craven, who also made the cult A Nightmare On Elm Street films (1984 to present), died in 2015 after working on the first four Scream films with Williamson.

“When Wes died, I had sort of said goodbye to the franchise, and thinking it was over for me,” Williamson said. “And then when they brought me back into the fold, I got excited again.”

The Scream franchise has been hugely profitable over its three decades, with the exception of Scream 4 (2011), grossing an estimated billion dollars or more in total at the box office, according to industry figures.

Williamson was executive producer on the fifth and sixth instalments, but is a director for the first time for Scream 7, which became embroiled in a very public off-screen row about the war in Gaza.

Mexican lead actress Melissa Barrera fell afoul of the film’s Hollywood producers Spyglass in November 2023 after criticising Israel’s “genocide and ethnic cleansing” of encircled Gaza, which she likened to a “concentration camp”.

Spyglass sacked her, declaring that they had “zero tolerance for anti-Semitism” and “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion”. United Nations experts have since concluded Israel’s war amounted to “genocide”.

American co-star Jenna Ortega, who played the sister of Barrera’s character Sam Carpenter, walked out of the production in solidarity, and original director Christopher Landon quit over the ensuing furore.

“The amount of abuse that I had to deal with – I decided I didn’t want to give any part of myself to that,” the American film-maker told US magazine Vanity Fair of his decision in 2025, saying he had been wrongly blamed for the decision to fire Barrera.

Scream 7 is landing at a time when horror movies are back in vogue. Sinners and Weapons – both of which Williamson praised – were some of 2025’s buzziest hits.

“The horror genre is so cyclical,” he added. “We go through cycles, and it’s usually connected to what’s going on in the world. Horror has always been a mirror to society.”

Scream 7 sees the return of Canadian actress Neve Campbell, 52, as original protagonist Sidney Prescott after she opted out of the previous instalment due to a salary dispute.

She believed she had been offered pay that was below what a male actor of her status would command.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on March 5, Scream 7 is set to focus on Sidney as she builds a new life for herself in a small Indiana town – until Ghostface turns up and begins targeting her daughter (Isabel May).

“There’s a wonderful relationship between the mother and daughter, and we really tried to zero in on the emotional horror, like to really make you feel it,” Williamson said. AFP