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Scream co-director says there's 'more gas in the tank' for new sequels beyond fifth film
Ghostface could have many more years of stabbing ahead of them.
It's been 10 years since the last time a Scream film was in theaters, but that all changes next month when the fifth film in the franchise, titled simply Scream, finally arrives. Like Scream 4 before it, the new film features a merging of old and new, bringing in a cast of younger actors to work alongside legacy stars like Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette, as well as new filmmakers to lead the charge.
With all the new energy involved, you might be thinking that there's plenty of room for new stories in the franchise, and according to co-director Tyler Gillett, you're probably right.
Gillett, who helmed the new film alongside his Radio Silence co-founder Matt Bettinelli-Olpin -- replacing original franchise director Wes Craven, who passed away in 2015 -- sat down with Total Film last month for a discussion of Scream's past and present. But he also took a moment to point the way toward the future.
"This new cast of characters is so wonderful," Gillett said. "The legacy cast, they're so wonderful. I think what we discovered, and what [screenwriters] Guy [Busick] and James [Vanderbilt] did, is they found a real reason for the next story to exist. We know that there is more gas in the tank. There are more stories to be told in Woodsboro, and about these characters, for sure."
The new cast Gillett's referring to includes a number of rising stars like Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Dylan Minnette, and Jack Quaid, all of whom will bring a new perspective to the Scream franchise in the same way that Scream 4 stars like Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere did back in 2011. It's also notable that Gillett teased "more stories to be told in Woodsboro," the fictional hometown of Sidney Prescott and the source of the original Ghsotface murders.
While sequels like Scream 2 and Scream 3 moved the action away from the town, Scream 4 brought Woodsboro back as the epicenter, and Scream seems to be continuing that tradition. It's not hard to imagine that the new film could kick off a full-blown new trilogy of stories stemming from Woodsboro's dark past, shifting the story to follow a new group of survivors caught up in the chaos. After all, as trailers for the new film have teased, "it's always someone you know."
Scream is in theaters January 14.
