Horror hottie Neve Campbell says she won’t be reprising her franchise-making role as Sidney Prescott in Scream 6—hyped to be the bloodiest, most gore-filled yet—because producers won’t pay up.
“Sadly, I won’t be making the next ‘Scream’ film,” she said in a statement. “As a woman I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to ‘Scream.’”
The offer Campbell received “did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise,” she said.
The slasher franchise created by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson has featured Campbell as Prescott and a constantly shrinking core of fellow survivors fighting off evermore unlikely psychos picking up the iconic mask and knife of Ghostface since 1996.
“It’s been a very difficult decision to move on,” she continued. “To all my ‘Scream’ fans, I love you. You’ve always been so incredibly supportive to me. I’m forever grateful to you and to what this franchise has given me over the past 25 years.”
Campbell recently spoke frankly about the difficulty of getting fair pay in the franchise in a conversation with another screen queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, in Variety.
“The truth of the matter is, I didn’t really make much money off of the horror movies,” Curtis said. “I did not have ownership in the movies… There was no back end. … There was no large amount of money made.”
Campbell related, saying that on Scream 3 she “did all right but no back end. There’s always the promise of back end. And then, of course, it’s drowned in publicity and costs and all the reasons they say, ‘Oh, actually no, we didn’t make the amount of money that we’re claiming we made in all the press, so that we don’t have to give you that,’ unfortunately.”
One character who’s been in the franchise since the very beginning was killed off in this year’s Scream 5—stupidly called just Scream—so this will be an added blow to the fans, who were almost ready to forgive Scream 3.
A theatrical release for Scream 6 is set for March 31, 2023, from Paramount Pictures. James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick co-wrote the screenplay for the new film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett returning as directors.
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