Matthew Lillard is down to return for Scream 5

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Original SCREAM star, Matthew Lillard, wants the world to know he's available for SCREAM 5, although his return would take some clever retconning to make work.

As previously reported, SCREAM 5 is happening from the filmmakers behind READY OR NOT and news broke last week that franchise heroine, Neve Campbell, has had talks with their team about returning as Sydney Prescott, although nothing is set in stone. While speaking with "TooFab" about the SCREAM franchise, Lillard stated he's available to return as Stu:

"Yes, yes, I'm available, yes, yes! There's nobody that wouldn't want to come back and reprise a role they got to do when they were a boy and be able to do something different as a man would be exciting. You just don't get that opportunity often."

Lillard is quick to admit that he "can't imagine that's the way they'll go" but he also seems to be shooting his shot. Bringing Stu back would be difficult since, *1996 SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!, he takes a television to the head in the first film and didn't appear to survive the ordeal. That being said, his return was once explored before by Wes Craven many years ago. If you dig up some behind the scenes info on the SCREAM franchise, Lillard has previously said that an original treatment for SCREAM 3  included a twist ending of Stu controlling the murders from his jail cell, similarly revealing the character to have survived the original SCREAM. This idea was dropped entirely following the events of the Columbine massacre because they thought it would've been in poor taste to have someone using high schoolers to carry out the ordered killings. From there, a complete rewrite of the SCREAM 3 concept was done and we ultimately got the more jokey Scooby-Doo episode masquerading as a feature film that became the final cut. 

Stranger things have happened in horror films so I wouldn't be surprised if they made something happen to bring him back but I'm on the side of Stu being dead and gone. I'd rather they keep it somewhat grounded in reality and not try to have Stu make a miraculous comeback. A television through the head complete with electrocution is a hard thing to come back from. 

Would YOU want to see Matthew Lillard return?