Melissa Barrera becomes the latest star to be dropped from the Scream series following the departure of longtime series lead, Neve Campbell.
Despite being the star of the last two Scream films, Melissa Barrera has been dropped from the planned production of Scream VII which is being developed by Spyglass.
Reports are stating that Spyglass has released Barerra following social media posts made online about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Spyglass has offered no comment on the matter, but it’s understood Melissa Barerra is no longer involved in the next film.
Despite dating back to the 1990s, the Scream series is one of those invaluable commodities in Hollywood, a franchise that is in the ascendancy.
Barrera has led the ensemble for the last two films: Scream V (entitled, er, Scream) took $137.7 million at the global box office and this year’s Scream VI came in with $168.9 million.
However, the project has already lost Radio Silence, the directorial team behind those two films, not to mention long-time star, Neve Campbell, who recently spoke about her departure (as reported by Deadline), stating “there’s someone at the top who only thinks about money and that’s their prerogative.”
Scream VII still has Jenna Ortega attached to it, while Freaky director Christopher Landon has stepped in to take the reins. Landon took to Twitter to briefly address the situation, stating: “Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make.”
He sounds thrilled with the news, then. But remains aboard the film, and will still direct.
This is all a fair degree of early turbulence for the project given that Spyglass will want to get it into production as soon as possible to maintain the series’ positive momentum. Expect release date news and whatnot relatively soon there.
As for Barrera, she was rumoured of late to be starring in a vampire movie directed by Radio Silence. We’ll let you know more on that front as we hear it as well.
