No one ever suspected that screenwriter Guy Busick would be responsible for so much death and carnage. Not initially a horror connoisseur, a young Busick developed a love of the genre after devouring, you guessed it, 1996’s Scream. Along with co-writer R. Christopher Murphy, he went on to torment newlywed Grace (Samara Weaving) in Ready or Not, a horror-comedy where the Devil-worshipping Le Domas family hunted her down before gloriously exploding in bloody fashion.
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Busick continued his killer streak by reuniting Sidney (Neve Campbell), Gale (Courteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette) for the successful Scream 5 and its subsequent sequel a year later… minus a certain final girl and everyone’s favorite bumbling cop… that featured not one, not two, but three Ghostfaces doing the dirty deed. Both were penned by James Vanderbilt and Busick. He followed those up with the vampire-ballerina romp Abigail and Final Destination: Bloodlines, the most successful installment of that franchise. Most recently, he sharpened his knife again for Scream 7 – with a story by Vanderbilt and Busick and a screenplay by Kevin Williamson and Busick – that saw the return of Sidney and introduced her daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), as a sadistic new Ghostface emerged to target them and those they loved.
In a massive spoiler-filled interview for Scream 7, Busick spoke to ComicBook about Sidney’s new family, resurrecting Stu Macher, favorite kills and unmasking Ghostface.
ComicBook: Scooby-Doo served as my gateway into horror. What was your first introduction to the genre?
Guy Busick: That’s a really good question. I don’t know if this is absolutely correct, but the first one that popped into my head was Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. I was traumatized. I learned at that young of an age, I was probably 7 or 8 when that came out, that the only way for me not to be scared of a thing -whether it was a movie or video – was to become an expert on it. I did all the research I could on how they did the effects, the werewolf transformation and all that stuff. “OK, I can handle this now.” In a lot of ways, because I wasn’t a horror kid growing up and kinda avoided the genre, my co-writer of the Ready or Nots, Ryan Murphy who goes by R. Christopher Murphy because of the other Ryan Murphy, we grew up together and he was a horror kid. We met in Junior High and so he introduced me to the world.
But honestly, it wasn’t until Scream that I became a massive horror fan. I think it surprised my family and a lot of my childhood friends that I went into this genre because it was not my thing for a long long time. I was like, “Finally, I get it with Scream.” I went back and watched all the classics, everything I missed and everything I avoided. It’s a genre that just doesn’t let you down. There’s so much great amazing horror right now. It seems to be what is driving the box office a lot, which is really fun to see.
Looking at Scream 7, once Neve Campbell signed on board, how did that steer the trajectory of the story you wanted to tell?
We had always wanted to do a Sidney story and we were thrilled that we got Neve back. We had to go to her with the idea and she responded very positively. Then, we worked closely with her as we built the movie. The central idea was always, “What is Sidney’s life now, now that she has children and she has a daughter that was the same age as she was when the first movie occurred? And how would she parent? What are the ups and downs of that mother/daughter relationship?” That was always the emotional core for us, was the mother and daughter being at each other’s throats and having to figure out this relationship in order to survive this ordeal.
Early buzz heralded the return of Stu, Roman and Dewey. How did you land on this all-star reunion?
The Stu part was there from the beginning. I don’t remember whose idea it was as we were developing it, to see if we could get back some of the prior Ghostfaces that Sidney had encountered. And, also, Dewey because we just love David Arquette so much. Stu was always a part of it. I can’t take credit for the way he was brought back. That was a James idea, but I immediately latched onto it. As the character in the beginning who gets killed off says, “I am a Stu head,” I’ve always been a Stu head. I have always tried to figure out how to bring Matthew back as that character and it always felt like a cheat if he was actually alive. I didn’t want to disrespect that first movie.
It was talked about that maybe he is alive, but that never really sat right with me. I am glad that Stu Macher is dead, but it was still the chance to give the fans Stu in an unexpected way. I know Matthew had a great time playing him. He slipped back into it so easily. I got to live my dream of writing dialogue for Stu Macher, even though it’s not actually Stu. When we approached some of the other past Ghostfaces, we were lucky enough to get Laurie Metcalf back and Scott Foley and then David came back to reprise Dewey. I wish we could have used them more, honestly. It made sense to do it in that way. The reason to have Stu was to torment Sidney about her past, her choices, what her legacy really is and what her purpose really is. It was on theme to bring him back even more at the end, to twist the knife a little bit.
Jill is notably absent. Was that due to Emma Roberts availability? Or could Jill still be alive and these were all deceased Ghostfaces?
I don’t know anything about Emma or if she was approached. I love Jill, too. But she was shot in the chest. It wasn’t just the defibrillator. Sidney shoots her in the chest. That’s a pretty definitive ending… Even more so than Stu.
Nostalgia plays heavily into this movie. We get sequences that are reminiscent of past Scream films. Why did you want to pull on those strings?
I am a nostalgic person at times, too. I also think nostalgia can be dangerous. It’s good in doses. It’s sort of like in Scream 5, where the killers were obsessed with the Stab franchise. They felt wronged by the latest instalment so they wanted to give Hollywood another true-life incident to create a new Stab movie around. It’s about toxic fandom. It’s something all of us in the industry have been on both sides of because as fans, we have strong opinions, too. It really was about the dangers of nostalgia.
This woman who was the mastermind, Jessica, wanted Sidney Prescott frozen in amber. It’s this weird parasocial relationship we can have with celebrities. Actors, musicians, tech people… People are idolized and admired. Some people, we just want them to act a certain way and give you just what you want. They don’t want them to evolve and grow into their own people. It’s, “Do the thing that you do.” For Jessica, that was giving Sidney the inspiration to return because she kills the bad guys. She’s a survivor. That’s her whole thing. But Sidney was like, “That’s not me anymore. I now have a family. I want to be a mother and have a business. I left all that behind. I am not in the public eye anymore. I wrote this book, said my piece and now I am done.” So, this is about somebody who can’t let go of their nostalgia and takes it to an extreme.
At the same time, we also want to give the fans an enjoyable amount of nostalgia, where we can call back to certain moments like Billy Loomis sneaking into Sidney’s bedroom window and replay that with her daughter, but with a twist. This time, Sidney is on the other side of that bedroom door. Those were fun moments. I think the danger is letting them drive too much of the story and then you are just pandering. It’s a fine line and hopefully we don’t cross it. But I enjoyed those references, too.
Sidney’s daughter, Tatum, is named after her best friend from the first Scream. With Tatum, are you bringing a new final girl into the mix?
That remains to be seen. The point we wanted to make at the end of this story is we no longer have to worry about Tatum in terms of her not being prepared for whatever life throws at her. To me, that is a wonderful ending. What happens after this, that’s completely off limits.
But I like the idea that this was a fractured relationship that was healed through this experience and that the trauma can end here. Tatum is now strong like her mom and she’s prepared. That’s all she wanted to be. In that final scene, Sidney tells Tatum, “I wanted you to be like Tatum. I just never wanted you to go through what I did.” But as Tatum said back, “I don’t think you had a choice. This is something that is going to follow our family, by virtue of your past and your history. If that’s the case, we have to be ready for it.”
There’s some creative kills. Which one stands out?
My favorite one is probably Gale running down the first Ghostface with the van. We don’t kill Ghostface half way through a Scream movie and that was something I was really proud about. I always wanted to do that where we just unmask the killer half way through and it’s a real, “Who the f*ck is that?” Then you are like, “This is breaking some rules here. We are in unchartered territory. That’s not the formula. That’s not how this is supposed to go.” That one was really fun. Then, obviously, the multiple deaths of Jessica in the end. “Always gotta shoot them in the head.” They shot her in the head many times.
Director Kevin Williamson said in an interview that they needed to go back and amp up the gore factor. Which murders required more violence and blood?
I have to give all the credit to what you eventually see on film to Kevin. I wrote the first couple of drafts with Kevin’s guidance. So, we broke the whole story together. By the time I had to jump over to Ready or Not 2, I handed over what was essentially the movie, but he then took it in directions I was very surprised about, in a good way about, and being able to read his drafts and go, “Oh my God. That’s something only Kevin Williamson could come up with and it’s brilliant. It’s bloody.” I think he did push some of those kills a little farther. It was fun looking at dailies, seeing the cuts come in as the effects get finalized and things like that. I was like, “Oh, this is very bloody.” You have to remind yourself that the very first kill in the entire franchise is Drew Barrymore’s disembowelment. “Oh, they made this one too bloody.” Go back to the original and say that. It’s always been like that. That’s part of the fun of it.
Fans enjoy dissecting which Ghostface slaughtered which victim. Do you actually detail that in the script? Is that practically figured out?
We have to practically figure it out. I don’t know on this one. I can guess. As I said, Kevin kind of took over at a certain point and things got moved around a little bit from where I left off. You’d have to ask him specifically for 7, but I can tell you who was the killer in 5 and 6, for sure, for each one of the kills.
Certain slayings are more obvious. For instance, when Lucas gets impaled on that bar tap. Jessica wouldn’t have the strength to do that.
Yeah, and it’s also her own son. That would be particularly cruel.
She didn’t seem that fond of him anyways.
She wasn’t, but that is going the extra mile. That one would have been Marco just because of the logistics of it and the physicality. I don’t think she could have lifted him up above her head and planted him on that thing.
Patrick Dempsey was in talks to reprise his Scream 3 role as Mark. When he couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict, did you just swap out his Mark for Joel McHale’s Mark?
The hope was for that Mark to be the Mark of Scream 3. But Mark is a pretty common name, so we had to go with that because Sidney says it in 5, when she is talking to Dewey on the phone. So, “OK, she’s married to a Mark.” Then it made sense to us that she’s married to someone in law enforcement. Once we knew who was going to play the part, we were able to write to Joel’s strengths. He just knocked that out of the park. He plays a full range of things in this movie. I was thrilled to be part of giving him a role like that.
I am a huge fan of his anyway. To have him be funny, charming and a good dad, and a good cop and tough… That was really cool. I’d love to see him come back, too. Sometimes I hear a name and I’m like, “That’s not who I was picturing in my head,” but by the time the movie comes out, I am like, “That could not have been played by anyone else. It had to be that actor.” I don’t know how many writers get to experience that.
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
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