Neve Campbell’s iconic final girl Sidney Prescott will once again be the central focus of Scream VII after spending several films on the fringes of the action.
Neve Campbell has been talking a little about her role in Scream VII, and it sounds as though the horror franchise is changing course somewhat and heading right back to its roots. Like most slasher sequels, the Scream films have never strayed too far from their beginnings, with themes of legacy and recurring characters always being part of the series’ lore. Over the last couple of films though, the creative direction of franchise has sought to push the films in new directions. The action in the last movie was situated in New York, for example, rather than Woodsboro, the usual setting. Also, Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott – the series central star – didn’t even appear.
Things are set to change on that front, though, and while Campbell has yet to see a script for Scream VII (which is odd, given her Instagram post from earlier this year shows the screenplay’s front cover), sounds as though the action is going to focus on Campbell’s character once more. The actor revealed this nugget of information to Entertainment Tonight, stating, “we are going to follow Sidney. They did pitch the concept to me, and it’s the reason that I jumped on board.”
That certainly suggests a sizeable change in direction for the series, given that the last two films have worked hard to distinguish themselves from the series’ past. Still, to anybody that’s followed the behind-the-scenes goings on (including Campbell’s departure over a pay dispute), it won’t come as much of a surprise. In what proved to be a very turbulent month for the franchise, Scream VII lost both of its stars and then its director before, unsurprisingly, a ‘creative reset’ was decided on.
News later emerged that the writer of the original Scream, Kevin Williamson had come aboard and would be directing a new version of Scream VII. It was also announced that Neve Campbell would be returning as Sidney Prescott. Now it looks like Campbell’s character will be at the heart of the action, and Campbell seems pretty pleased about that:
“I love these movies,” she added, “they are so much fun to be a part of, I’m so grateful for them, I could never have imagined being a part of a movie that would have lasted this many decades.”
We’re curious to see how the latest iteration of Scream VII plans to retain its freshness if it plans to return to a lead character that we’ve been with several times before, since the 1990s. The last two films have successfully introduced plenty of new, younger fans to the series but how will a film that reverts to older legacy characters keep that sense of constant revitalisation? That’s the challenge facing the creative team behind the film and we’re looking forward to seeing how they approach it.
