No Neve = No More Scream!
First thing’s first – is it a reboot, a remake, or a new set of sequels? Someone out there has their information mixed up. The original report from Entertainment Weekly.com was that the SCREAM franchise was “being remade into a whole new set of movies.” In the same article they say that “[Kevin] Williamson has approached Courtney Cox Arquette and David Arquette to return.” So they’re going to remake SCREAM but have the same actors play the same parts? Or is Courtney playing Sidney now? In all my confusion I’ve decided that EW has their lingo all fucked up. These will be sequels, with or without Neve Campbell. So, now the question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Let’s discuss.
SCREAM is, was, and always will be defined by Neve and Wes Craven. Those two don’t sign up and you might as well promote it as another SCARY MOVIE sequel and hire Carmen Electra. Nobody cares about what happened to Gale and Dewey. Their life is only interesting when they hang around with Sidney, and the phone starts ringing. Everybody but Sid has been expendable in this series and to be honest, if this ever does come to fruition, I strongly believe Gale would be the perfect opening kill for the new sequel. It’s the perfect way to get the old audience back and prove that the filmmakers aren’t screwing around. The Arquettes are not the stars of this franchise. I don’t care how many videotape cameos you get Jamie Kennedy to shoot, if Williamson is going to try and make this story about anybody else other than Sidney Prescott it will fail. And it will fail hard.
So say Neve does sign on, and Craven realizes his paychecks aren’t coming nearly as quick as they used to, so he jumps aboard too. Am I sold? Not even close. How much story is left in these characters? SCREAM and SCREAM 2 are both among my favorites of all time in the slasher sub-genre. I consider the second to be the superior film (albeit with the weaker ending) but consider both of them smart and well written films that introduced modern fanboys to the horror genre. The third movie, while watchable, does nothing for me (If anything, maybe they should remake that movie). There were too many reaches away from the original magic to consider this a viable entry to the series. They just ran out of places to go and tried tying new characters into the ongoing mystery of Sidney’s mother and forced us to believe it all fit together in a perfect little trilogy. It didn’t, and that’s scary when you think about the prospect of three new movies trying to do the same thing.
Maybe it’s the booze talking but I think there are too many things that could go wrong with this plan. What was once fresh and rejuvenating might seem out of place now in a genre dominated by brand new versions of it’s own legends. The ghost mask isn’t quite legendary yet, and I’m afraid the rush to get him back to the big screen so soon might block him from ever getting there.