Horror franchises never die, and if they do they can always come back from the dead. Take the Scream empire. A TV version has been on the air for three seasons now, but it’s been years — eight of them, in fact — since we’ve gotten a Scream movie. According to Bloody Disgusting, in a claim confirmed by Deadline, a fifth installment in the meta series is in the very early stages of development.
How early? The only news is that it will be a fifth Scream movie. There’s no word of who, if anyone, is coming back, among them perpetual “final girl” Neve Campbell, weirdly capable doofus deputy David Arquette, and egomaniacal but lovable gossip queen Courteney Cox. Or maybe they’ll clean house and start from scratch, then make a ton of references about reboots. Anything could happen!
Despite only birthing four films so far, plus that TV series, the Scream franchise has now been around as long as any of the horror classics they were endlessly referencing. The first Scream, made all the way back in 1996, introduced post-modernism to mainstream American horror, with characters raised on slashers yet for the most part unable to avoid being slashed. The series seemed to peter out by 2000’s Scream 3, only to return eleven years later for the hilariously grouchy Scream 4 — an autumnal get-off-my-lawn work that would also prove the swan song of the series’ creator, horror legend Wes Craven, who passed in 2015. Hopefully he’s not currently turning over in his grave.
(Via Bloody Disgusting and Deadline)
