Kevin Williamson explains how Scream 3 became The Following

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

We all know Kevin Williamson as the man who thought up SCREAM, one of the true game-changers of the horror genre. (Well, those of us who are old enough; the kids probably associate him with “The Vampire Diaries.”) Now he’s overseeing a different kind of slasher with “The Following”, a serial killer drama that just premiered on Fox last night. (Its ratings were good, by the way.)

We also know that Williamson exited the franchise after SCREAM 2, replaced by Ehren Kruger before returning over a decade late with SCREAM 4. But did you know that if Williamson had penned part 3, we probably wouldn’t have “The Following”? In a interview with Entertainment Tonight, Williamson explained how his original idea for SCREAM 3 morphed into television’s creepiest new show.

“In my original story for Scream 3, the killers were basically a fanclub of Woodsboro kids that had formed because of Stab 1 and Stab 2… They were all doing the killings and the big surprise of the movie was when Sidney walked into the house after Ghostface had killed everyone … and they all rose up. None of them were actually dead and they’d planned the whole thing.”

“The motive was their quest for fame, so I just placed that into one character with Scream 4… They were trying to top [Sidney’s] Woodsboro story so they could be the legacy of their hometown. All those ideas metamorphosed into The Following.”

The more you know…