Scream 7 producers forced to rewrite script as lead actor is fired over social media posts
Ghostface is back with his (or her) red right hand, as Scream 7 comes slashing its way into cinemas. While it once looked like the franchise had breathed its last when Wes Craven's controversial Scream 3 rounded out his trilogy in 2000, it then rose from the dead when he delivered Scream 4 as his final film in 2011.
There's since been a middling (but underrated) TV series, as well as a fresh take on the slasher series when Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett delivered Scream as a requel in 2022.
Praised as a melding of old and new, the movie set up new leads in the form of Melissa Barrera's Sam Carpenter and Jenna Ortega's Tara Carpenter. Neve Campbell returned as the OG final girl in the form of Sidney Prescott, although things went awry when she fell out with the studio over pay for 2023's Scream VI.
This was just the start of the franchise's worries, and as Scream 7 heads to theaters, there's a Barrera-shaped hole in the story. More than this, Variety reports that it cost Paramount Pictures a whopping $500,000 just to write Sam Carpenter out of the movie.
Advert
After losing Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett in August 2023 due to scheduling conflicts with Abigail, Scream 7 was then paused due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. There was a catastrophic snowball effect, and on November 21, 2023, it was confirmed that Barerra had been let go due to social media posts she'd made about the war in Gaza. At the time, Barerra made her feelings clear when she posted the following on her Instagram story: “Cornering everyone together, with nowhere to go, no electricity no water.
“People have learnt nothing from our histories… Just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
Spyglass is the company behind Scream, confirming that Barrera had been dropped and adding that it has "zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech."
Although a United Nations Special Committee and Amnesty International have since ruled that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, Barerra was written out of Scream 7. Alongside this, Ortega was also out as Tara, with conflicting reports that originally suggested it was due to a scheduling conflict with Wednesday and then a pay dispute similar to Campbell's.
Later speaking to The Cut, Ortega confirmed that things were 'falling apart' as she concluded: "If Scream 7 wasn’t going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”
After the troubled production also lost Christopher Landon after he replaced Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet, long-time Scream writer Kevin Williamson stepped up to direct his first entry. Variety reports that exits of Barrera and Ortega led to a 'serious retooling' of the script, especially due to them becoming the leads in the absence of Sidney Prescott in Scream VI. Sources confirm the rewrite was in the area of $500,000, but add that it "isn’t a major expenditure for a franchise of this size."
Scream 7 continues to be a source of controversy, with many fans vowing to boycott the movie over the studio's treatment of Barerra. Some have even taken it as far as revealing the killer/potential killers ahead of time, although Variety says this doesn't seem to be affecting the bottom line.
Scream 7 is apparently heading toward a $45 million to $50 million North America opening, and if so, that would deliver a record-breaking win for the long-running horror favorite.