Neve Campbell Talks "Bittersweet" Return to 'Scream' Without Wes Craven

BY Allie GregoryPublished May 12, 2020

After announcing her probable return to the Scream movie franchise earlier this month, Neve Campbell has shared that she thinks reprising her role as Sidney Prescott will feel "bittersweet" without slasher genre mastermind Wes Craven helming the forthcoming new instalment.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Campbell elaborated on reboot negotiations with Scream's new creators, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. In the interview, she spoke at length about her mixed feelings returning to the film series without Craven, who passed away in 2015.

Read an excerpt from the interview below:

I definitely had a period where I was thinking it would just be too odd to do a movie without Wes, and I wasn't certain that I would want to do that. But, I think enough time has passed. I got this really, really respectful letter from the directors [Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett] of the new one. They wrote a letter honouring Wes in such a beautiful way, and they expressed that the reason they make horror movies is because of Wes and the Scream films. They also expressed how blown away they are at the idea of actually getting an opportunity to make one of them and how much they want to honour and respect Wes' vision. So, we'll see. We're just in the beginning phases of negotiations, and we'll have to see where it goes with COVID and everything. There are a lot of things up in the air, such as when we'll actually get to make the movie and how we can even reenter this business at the moment.

Campbell was approached earlier this year about her return for the series's fifth instalment, Scream 5.

"It's always fun for me to step back in [Sidney Prescott's] shoes," Campbell told Rotten Tomatoes of her return. "And it's always fun for me to see the cast come back and make one of these films again and try to make another good one."

In addition to Campbell's involvement, franchise co-star David Arquette told Movieweb last year that he would be on board to return to the Scream family — as long as they'll have him.

The film is tentatively scheduled to see theatrical release sometime in 2021, pandemic pending. The most recent instalment of the franchise was 2011's Scream 4. Campbell has starred in all four movies since their inception in the late '90s.

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