The new Scream is full of Easter eggs, cameos, surprises, and, as it turns out, the filmmakers were hoping to have even more. Their desire was to have a cameo from Rian Johnson, who gets called out a bit during a joke in the film, and the fan-favorite return of Hayden Panettiere as Kirby.
In the film, director Rian Johnson is referred to as “the Knives Out guy” when it’s revealed that he directed the movie-within-a-movie sequel, Stab 8. The meta-joke pokes fun at Rian Johnson’s divisive helming of Star Wars: The Last Jedi by claiming Johnson turned Stab 8 into something it wasn’t by severing ties to the previous movies. During a chat with “Variety“, Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, along with their Radio Silence executive producer Chad Villella, tried to find a way to have Johnson have an on-screen cameo but scheduling conflicts didn’t allow it to happen. They said, “we reached out and wanted to do a fake, ‘ET/Extra’ press junket thing with him. He was off making Knives Out 2. So he had bigger fish to fry than our Scream sequel.”‘
As it turns out, Johnson’s cameo would’ve coincided with the on-screen return of Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby Reed. Panettiere became a fast fan-favorite after appearing in Scream 4 although her character seemingly died. Fans quickly jumped at the notion that we never see her dead body so it was VERY possible that she survived the fourth installment. In a bit of an Easter egg moment in the new film, it’s revealed that Kirby did indeed survive as we see an image of her listed as a Woodsboro Survivor in a related video when one of the characters is watching a reaction video of the Stab 8 trailer. During a chat with The Wrap, Gillett elaborated on what they intended to do with the character:
“We did talk about it, and we really wanted to. We had a Zoom with Hayden and we really wanted to try to find a way to get her into the movie. In fact, in that YouTube section of the movie, that was initially going to be a clip of Rian Johnson, talking about making ‘Stab 8’ with Woodsboro survivor Kirby. But we weren’t able to get all the pieces in place in time to get it into the movie. So we had to quickly pivot and Hayden was totally understandable about all that. But, so we wanted to get some nod to Kirby being in the movie, and then we did get her voice to lend to the ‘to Wes’ toast.”
It would’ve been great to get these cameos, although I would’ve loved in Hayden Panettiere was given a substantial role in this new film because she was my favorite new addition in Scream 4. It was cool to see that they threw in some nods to let the fans know that the character did survive so there is an opportunity to bring her back in the next installment. With a budget of $24 million, Scream has already grossed $84.9 million worldwide so news of a follow-up shouldn’t be too far behind.
Would YOU have liked cameos from Rian Johnson and Hayden Panettiere in Scream?