When Scream calls, Kevin Williamson tends to pick up the call. The creator of the horror franchise has been a franchise constant since he penned the script for the 1996 Wes Craven-directed original, his involvement waxing and waning.
“I’ve said goodbye to this franchise so many times that it’s crazy,” says Williamson. “We had a very difficult time making Scream 4. And, after Wes died, I thought it was done. I thought, for me, this franchise is over. I hoped it would continue in some form, but not with me.”
Well, he could not have been more wrong. On the heels of an overhaul, notably the firing of Melissa Barrera and the departures of Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon, he was brought back in for Scream 7 and found himself more involved than ever. He directed and co-wrote the feature, which has now grossed north of $150 million at the global box office in its first two weeks of release.
Speaking during a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Williamson talked about bringing back original franchise lead Neve Campbell (who left after the fifth installment, citing a lowball salary offer), his initial reluctance to write 1990s sci-fi classic The Faculty and his late collaborator James Van Der Beek. The actor, who died Feb. 11 after a battle with colorectal cancer, starred as a Williamson proxy in the WB drama Dawson’s Creek.
News of you joining the film coincided with the announcement of Neve returning after her very public departure from the franchise and a bit of a cast reset. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that all came together and making her the focus?
They sent me the script. I read it. Then all the other stuff happened, and I got a phone call one day saying, “OK, well, we’re gonna go in a different direction now and we want to bring Neve Campbell back Do you have her number?” I think what they met by that is, “Can you call her?” Finally, I had something to do! The other time it was, “Do you happen to have Hayden Panettiere’s phone number?” And I called her and got them together.
You’re a diplomat at this point, basically.
I’ve known Neve for all this time. And we’re dear friends. I was like, “You know, there’s a couple of hurdles you’re going to have with this one — and I think you know what they are.” They said they’d work all of that out. They just wanted to engage with her and see if she was interested in being Sidney Prescott again. So they let me participate in some of the development of the script. I got to work with Guy Busick on an outline of the story for her. We pitched it, and she was all in. And it was going to be the 30-year anniversary of the franchise, so we thought this could work really well to bring Sidney back and in a big way.
So how did you end up directing?
I got a phone call one day saying, “Neve wants to Zoom with you at five o’clock.” What does she want? I got nervous. We got on with producers and she said, “Will you please direct it?” That came out of nowhere, but I said yes before I even thought about it.
It’s hard to ignore how self-referential these films are. Did you look at it as a standalone, a kind of continuation of the last two or the start of a new series?
I didn’t look at it as a standalone film. I did think it might be the last film that we focus on Sidney wholly. What I love about Scream is that it’s found an identity and that it can reinvent itself. There’s someone different under that mask all the time. You can have a different killer, different motive, be in a different city. It can take on all these different ideas with the meta-universe we’ve created with the Stab franchise within the franchise. The premise of the original screen was someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far. That was the tagline. And this movie, we switched it up a little bit and we said someone has taken their love of Sidney Prescott one step too far. So we get into another scenario and another mindset of who the killer is and what the killer may be. The killer is always someone you know in these movies. Maybe this time it’s not.
Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
Could you see a version of Scream that completely liberates itself from the lore, the original characters, the Stab franchise and just starts from scratch with the ghost face mask and Roger Jackson’s voice?
Absolutely. There are so many different directions we can take. We chose to continue our storyline. We have Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) in seven. I think they’re integral to this franchise now. They are the niece and nephew of Randy (Jamie Kennedy), so the legacy of our characters has continued through them.
I’m glad you brought those characters up. There’s a moment in 7 where Mason snaps at Jasmin for using the word “content.” We live and work in this shrinking ecosystem where art is spoken of in not the most artistic of terms. What is your relationship with that term?
I think Guy wrote that scene. (Laughs.) I’ve been in this business for over 30 years, and it changes and evolves. You’ve gotta change and evolve with it. You just have to stay curious about the world around you. I think part of my problem is I have this arrested adolescence. I’m this really old man, but I’m still sort of a 15-year-old emotionally. I just sort of moved through the world wide-eyed and try to just keep learning and growing.
If you didn’t identify that way, would you have been able to write so many shows and movies about teens?
I don’t know if I can get into the head of a teenager today. I don’t even try anymore. But I never did. Even when I was writing Dawson’s Creek, all of those kids spoke like they had psychology degrees. That was sort of the style of the show. That was the whimsical nature of that story. And so I’ve never really written children. I don’t think kids are kids. That was one of my goals on Dawson’s Creek. We’d talk about this in the writers room all the time. I was so tired of seeing TV shows where you could just some 50-year-old dude wrote the teenager.
You wrote so many of the teen movies of the late ’90s/early aughts. And I ask this because I have my own answer, but which of them do you think is the most under-appreciated or underrated?
It’s hard to jump back into that lens. I got very overworked. I was very overextended. Hmm…
OK, I’ll just say it. The Faculty. I believe there should be a Criterion edition of The Faculty.
I had a great time with The Faculty, but I did not want to do that. There was a script that Bob [Weinstein] sent me when I was on the set of Scream, and I passed. Then he kept sending it. I’m a people pleaser, so he beat me down. Scream hadn’t come out. I didn’t know if I’d ever work again. But I had such mad respect for Robert Rodriguez. He had written that book, Rebel Without a Crew. And it was a great opportunity to work with him and I learned so much from him. He became a great friend and I love that cast.
That cast is stacked.
I’m not a science fiction dude. I didn’t know what to do. Once I latched onto this idea that it’s The Breakfast Club with aliens, I was able to wrap my head around it. Also, we made it parasites and not pods. The original draft of the writers who originally wrote the script, there were pods. I don’t think pods are scary. Parasites are scarier. So I went through the Robert Heinlein version of The Puppet Masters, not Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And I do love Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but I thought The Puppet Masters was a scarier concept. Robert and I chose that direction. And it’s very 90s. You could put it into a time capsule of the 90s. The dialogue, the clothes, the music, everything about it is 90s. And, you know, they keep threatening to remake it.
We just lost James Van Der Beek. I don’t want to make you talk about something so fresh, but, if you’re up for it, I’d love to hear about the experience of that cast reunion and live script reading Michelle Williams organized to benefit F Cancer and James.
I was filming Scream in Atlanta and got an email out of the blue from Michelle. She was the brainchild behind all this. She had the idea of a reading and to do it on Broadway. She’s married to Thomas Kail, who directed Hamilton, so he had an in with that theater. She asked me if I’d participate, and yes was the only answer. She did all of the work and she brought everyone together. Once the movie wrapped, I was able to participate more. And it was pretty magical. When we were doing Dawson’s Creek, I was also doing Scream, The Faculty, Halloween H2O and Teaching Mrs. Tingle. I was working on so many different things that I sometimes didn’t enjoy my career. Everything was at such a lightning speed that I didn’t stop and really take it in. That particular night was probably one the most special nights of my life.
I think everyone else felt it too. And James was meant to be there. We had a plane waiting for him. But the doctors just told him that he couldn’t travel. He was able to film a video that we were able to play to the fans. People showed up from all over the world. That just hadn’t occurred to me. Fifteen minutes before the show started, I was in Katie’s dressing room, changing, because we’d been in dress rehearsal and planning, because we threw it all together in one day on that Hamilton stage. We didn’t have a lot of time. So when I finally took my seat, it was packed. I was just mobbed with people and they were all there and they were all crying and they were all like trying, they were all like just talking about Dawson’s Creek and how much the show and James Van Der Beek meant to them. I couldn’t hold it together. It was so magical and special. The only thing missing was James.
From the people I know who attended, it sounded like a really wonderful night.
That’s a testament to James. He was a beautiful man, and I love him dearly. I was able to reconnect with him in these last years in a very special way, and I am so thankful for that. It’s so funny because I can just go back to meeting him when he was auditioning. I said, “You’re really mumbling. Can we stop the mumbling and just enunciate?” He thought I was such a brat. But he was so smart and he was so analytical. He asked me, “So tell me about this show and where is it going?” Well, we’re shooting a pilot. We don’t know. But he wanted to know if there was a series, where it would go. So tell him, “You’re Dawson. It’s your Creek.” Then he asked, “What does that mean? I want to be Spielberg, but do I ever make a movie? Am I a nerd?” So, I tell him, “You’re me. You’re going to be a big nerd.”
