Scream 5, an alumni-rife reunion of a film, is now set to revive the iconic horror franchise with the reveal of its official release date.
Paramount Pictures, which is distributing the Spyglass Media Group-co-produced film, has revealed that the Scream relaunch effort is scheduled to hit theaters on January 14, 2022. While that date is obviously far off on the horizon, it leaves the film in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend amongst debuting peers such as Warner’s Anne Hathaway-headlined Sesame Street film and Fox/Disney animated feature Nimona; a lineup that will likely evolve over the next year, especially after the hopeful event of a COVID vaccine.
The fifth Scream film will, of course, continue the horror franchise kicked off by 1996’s original Scream, a smart, meta-minded game-changer for the then-languishing slasher genre from master horror director Wes Craven, written by Kevin Williamson. Indeed, Craven—who passed away in 2015—was at the helm for its three sequels, 1997’s Scream 2, 2000’s Scream 3 and 2011’s Scream 4, the last of which would serve as his cinematic swan song. Now, notwithstanding MTV’s non-movie-canonical 2015-2019 Scream television series, the franchise, and its versions of signature stab-happy stalker Ghostface, is in the hands of directorial duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, members of the creative collective called Radio Silence, who recently conjured acerbically ultraviolent 2019 horror hit Ready or Not. They will work off a script by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man) and Guy Busick (Ready or Not).
While the title-withheld Scream 5 is being described by an array of nouns identifying it as either a sequel, reboot or revival, the facts are not precisely known about how it will manifest. However, recent casting news of franchise-familiar faces seem to telegraph a sequel or, in the very least, a follow-up that takes an à la carte approach to the existing cinematic canon akin to the 2018 Halloween reboot (and its upcoming sequels), which essentially designated every entry except the 1978 original film as ignored apocrypha. Yet, the confirmed presence of signature names is hard to ignore, especially with the film’s initial reveal this past May having immediately pointed to the casting of David Arquette to reprise his film-franchise-spanning role as Sheriff Dewey Riley. Indeed, this past July saw the confirmed return of (Arquette’s real-life ex-wife,) Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers, and rumors—while still unconfirmed—still seem to persist that Neve Campbell will reprise her role as embattled protagonist Sidney Prescott.
While nothing has been officially revealed about the plot of Scream 5, the original film’s writer, Kevin Williamson (who’s onboard here as an executive producer), has hinted that Radio Silence’s take on the movie is “both original, inventive and honors Wes’s legacy in a wonderful way.” Thus, we should expect something that’s similarly self-aware as the original Scream, but put through a lens that reflects the current state of the horror genre, which—as evidenced by its biggest recent hits from director Jordan Peele—seems to be moving in a direction of centering topical themes and tongue-in-cheek snark in its typical array of onscreen crimson-spilling.
Regardless, Scream 5 or whatever it will ultimately be titled, has booked a date to make a fateful call asking if you like scary movies on Friday, January 14, 2022.