The Scream franchise’s most iconic moment arguably remains Wes Craven’s shocking decision to kill Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker by the fifteen minute mark of the first film. Barrymore being, at that time, the movie’s most high-profile actor, the decision was neither understood nor liked by Dimension Film’s higher-ups.
In an oral history celebrating Scream‘s 25th anniversary from THR, editor Patrick Lussier revealed that production immediately hit complications once Bob Weinstein saw the Barrymore scene, which was the first one filmed. “The studio hated the dailies,” Lussier said. “They sent him dailies from their remake of Nightwatch and said, “You’ve got to look at this. This is how a movie’s made.”
Writer Kevin Williamson agreed, detailing how Craven was notified about studio complaints less than a week into production. As he recalled, “Wes got the phone call from the studio, and I was sitting behind him in my chair, and I just saw his back slump. He just started sliding down the chair. They didn’t think anything about it was good. They didn’t understand the lack of footage and they didn’t see his vision for that sequence at all.”
According to producers Cathy Konrad and Marianne Maddalena, this backlash mainly stemmed from Weinstein’s low opinion of the Ghostface killer’s design and the scene’s execution. Konrad attributed these complaints to them feeling Ghostface’s mask “wasn’t scary,” while Maddalena remembered Weinstein calling their production “workmanlike at best,” while the cast and crew felt otherwise. However, once Weinstein saw the scene’s final cut, he admitted his mistake and said, “What do I know about dailies? Keep going.”
In Scream‘s iconic opening, Casey receives a phone call from a mysterious individual who starts up a conversation on whether she “likes scary movies.” Gradually, her caller becomes more menacing and Casey is forced to play a game of horror movie trivia in an attempt to save her captive boyfriend. Unfortunately, she fails, and as a result, both are killed by Ghostface, who leaves Casey’s body strung up for her parents to find. The trailer for Scream’s upcoming 2022 sequel includes a callback to this scene, where someone dressed as Ghostface stalks a girl in her home and manages to mysteriously override the house’s digital security system.
The sequel, titled Scream instead of Scream 5, will see the return of Neve Campbell as protagonist Sydney Prescott alongside fellow Scream alumni Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Marley Shelton, who must protect a new group of people from becoming Ghostface’s victims. Though his motives remain unknown, one character notes in the trailer that his previous attacks involved “people related to the original killers.”
Source: THR
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