Despite being the protagonist through the Scream franchise’s first four films, Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott was reduced to a large cameo role in Scream V before being removed from the call sheet with Scream VI. As it stands now, it seems as if Campbell will also not appear in Scream VII. Even then, the actor says she harbors no “ill will” toward the films in the franchise she doesn’t appear in.
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“I watched it until two weeks ago. It took me a minute, I don’t know why,” Campbell said during a spotlight panel at Monster-Mania Con this month (via Deadline). “I actually thought they did a really good job. I think the cast are really powerful, wonderful actors.”
She added, “I don’t wish these movies ill will. I wanted the movie to be good. It’s not like I’m sitting in my house going, ‘I hope it sucks, I hope it doesn’t do well.’ I care about all the people involved. There’s someone at the top who only thinks about money and that’s their prerogative.”
Talks about Campbell’s return in Scream VI broke down after the actor claimed the studio wasn’t paying her the rightful wage.
“I did not feel that what I was being offered equated to the value that I bring to this franchise, and have brought to this franchise, for 25 years,” Campbell told PEOPLE Magazine last fall. “And as a woman in this business, I think it’s really important for us to be valued and to fight to be valued.”
She added, “I honestly don’t believe that if I were a man and had done five installments of a huge blockbuster franchise over 25 years, that the number that I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man. And in my soul, I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t walk on set feeling that — feeling undervalued and feeling the unfairness, or lack of fairness, around that.”
Though she’s not currently attached to Scream VII, studio executives may be looking to make a change after Melissa Barrera was fired from the project on Tuesday due to controversial comments made on social media.
Scream V and Scream VI are streaming on Paramount+. Scream VII is in development and has yet to set a release date.
