Kevin Williamson has been a major part of Scream since the first installment was released three decades ago. He wrote the screenplay to the first film for Wes Craven before going on to write Scream 2 and Scream 4. He’s directing for the first time in the franchise as the writer and director for the soon to be released sequel, Scream 7.
While promoting the release of Scream 7, Williamson reflected on the original ideas he had for the past three films in an interview with CinePOP. He shared that Emma Roberts’ Jill, who was revealed to be one of the Ghost Face killers in Scream 4, was intended to survive the ending instead of being killed off. She’d go on to be the main character in Scream 5, which would have seen her stalked by a new Ghost Face who found out she was the killer in Scream 4.
“Scream 4 was about Emma Roberts and her character Jill,” Williamson explained. “In my original conceit, Jill survived and went to college. And in college… she got away with it all… all the killings in Scream 4… and she was now the new Sidney. She was the new celebrity victim. And she was loving it. And someone figured her out, and started killing all the people in her life. And so, in order for her not to be exposed as the killer, she had to find the killer. And that was Scream 5.”
Williamson also shared how he would have had Scream 6 focus more on Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers. He said he would have killed of David Arquette’s Dewey in Scream 5, opening the door for Gale trying to find new love in the sequel. It would have put her in the same boat as Sidney in previous films, wherein she couldn’t be sure if her new lover was secretly Ghost Face.
“My Scream 6 was, now that Gale Weathers is trying to build a life without Dewey, because I would have killed Dewey too,” he said. “She was trying to rebuild her life. And it was about her finding love and trying to find, and in a weird way, she goes through exactly the same thing Sidney went through in Scream 1, which was, she’s dating a man. Is he or isn’t he the killer? She doesn’t know. So, it was sort of the reverse.”
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As fans of the movie series will know, these plans did not come to fruition. Jill was very much deceased by the end of Scream 4, and the following two films put the spotlight primarily on a new cast of characters. For Scream 7, Sidney is back as the protagonist, once again targeted by a mysterious Ghost Face killer. Perhaps this will be the time when her luck finally runs out.
Scream 7 hits theaters on Feb. 27, 2026.
