Blumhouse Exec Shoots Down Scream Reboot Rumors

While Blumhouse has reportedly expressed interest in reviving the flagging Scream film franchise in the past, there is no green light to move forward with those intentions, according to Blumhouse exec Ryan Turek. A report came out earlier today that Blumhouse was moving forward with new Scream, and Turek shared it to Twitter with a fan-disappointing “Ha, I wish” caption. And while that is a far cry from saying it will never happen, the idea that it is nearly finished seems a long way from true if that’s the way he responds to a rumor that he could just as easily have ignored.

Beginning in 1996, the Scream franchise turned out three movies and earned about $500 million by 2000. The franchise was meta, a little funny, and carried over multiple likable characters from installment to installment. In 2011, a fourth installment brought the franchise back, but failed to capture the magic of the first three and made less than $100 million. The death of franchise creator Wes Craven in 2015 seemingly closed the book on the franchise, although nothing ever stays buried long in the world of horror, or blockbuster film franchises. Rumors of a revival have been making the rounds since early 2017, with Blumhouse almost always involved in some way, either because they were interested or because every horror franchise they touch turns to gold or both.

Christopher Landon, director of Blumhouse’s Happy Death Day 2 U, addressed the question during a recent conversation with ComicBook.com.

“I love Scream. Scream is an amazing franchise, especially the first movie, which blew my mind when I saw it back in the day,” Landon said. “I think [writer] Kevin Williamson is so crazy talented and also a friend of mine. I also just think that there are a lot of stories to tell and I think that when you step back into a franchise, you better be doing it for the right reasons and it better be because you have a really good story to tell. And so I think there’s sometimes an unnecessary appetite for sequels and reboots. If you’ve got a cool story to tell, yeah, go for it, man. But otherwise, let’s just do something new.”

The troubled franchise made its way to TV in 2015, first on MTV and later on VH1. The series was done as a horror anthology without using the Ghostface killer who haunted the feature films at all. The upcoming and long-delayed third season will change all of that, as a recent clip revealed. That season, called Scream: Resurrection, ran on VH1 in July.