Scream: The TV Series Showrunners Reveal Original Plans for Seasons 3 and 4

The Scream franchise may have returned to the big screen earlier this year, but one of the last projects in the franchise that original director Wes Craven worked on was serving as a producer for Scream: The TV Series, which ran for two seasons and was then rebooted for a shortened, disconnected third season. Michael Gans and Richard Register served as the showrunners for Season 2 and never got to explore their entire plan for the project, though they recently broke down to Bloody Disgusting what their goals were for those unmade storylines, which would have honored the metatextual approach to the overall cinematic series.

With Scream: The TV Series having no narrative connection to the films, the storyline instead aimed to capture the murder-mystery tone, injected with quippy dialogue and self-referential themes. The first season saw a small town being stalked by a murderer, with podcaster Piper being revealed as the villain, while the second season revealed that Kieran had been Piper’s accomplice in the murders all along.

While the trauma endured by the survivors could have seen them turn into killers themselves, the showrunners hoped to use Kieran in a way to replicate an iconic on-screen dynamic.

“We pitched this kind of Silence of the Lambs thing,” Gans shared. “Someone was doing [the killings] at Kieran’s bidding, and the only person he would tell what was going on to was Emma. So she came in, and they had to sit face-to-face, and meanwhile, people are being killed. So they’re in a race against time to stop this from happening, all the while she’s sitting with him.”

The season would have culminated in Kieran breaking out of jail and being killed by Emma, only for the cameras to pull back and reveal that this was merely a TV production, injecting that sense of metatextual commentary. Amadeus Serafini, who played Kieran, would then walk to his dressing room as himself, only to then get killed.

Season 4 would have then continued this meta approach, with someone in an original Ghostface mask targeting individuals involved in the entire franchise, including the cast and crews of the TV show and the films, uniting the entire franchise.

In late 2017, a third season was announced, confirming that the characters from the previous seasons wouldn’t be involved and the entire concept was being rebooted with new showrunners. That season didn’t ultimately air until 2019. Even with the franchise now experiencing a resurgence on the big screen, Gans and Register aren’t ruling out the possibility of returning to the series they created to offer a more organic ending.

Scream 6 is set to hit theaters on March 31, 2023. You can head to Bloody Disgusting to check out the whole chat with the showrunners.

Do you wish we had gotten these seasons? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!