Scream‘s Sydney Prescott is easily one of the great Final Girls in the horror genre. What made her stand out above the pack was Neve Campbell’s stellar performance, as the actress carved her character out into a strong, three-dimensional person. What’s more, she managed to get through all four movies in the series still standing.
The last time Campbell played Sydney was back in 2011’s Scream 4, whose underwhelming box office take and reception ended up scuppering plans for a revived trilogy. But would the actress consider returning to the franchise for a fifth film? Campbell was promoting her latest project, Skyscraper, while talking with Kinowetter when the topic of Scream inevitably came up. She said that she thinks it would be hard to do another without the involvement of the late, great Wes Craven, but stopped short of ruling out the possibility.
“Well, ya know, I think it would be challenging… Wes Craven passed away… he was the reason those movies were so good. I mean, obviously Kevin Williamson wrote brilliant scripts. But ya know, Wes was the heart of the thing. He was what kept the dynamic consistence. I think it would be difficult to work with another director. But ya never know, ya never know.”
Campbell’s reluctance to do another without Craven is fair enough. The Nightmare on Elm Street filmmaker was the perfect choice to direct Scream, as he was a master of the horror genre and so knew how to mock and subvert the tropes associated with slasher movies with panache. Sadly, he passed away back in 2015 at the age of 76.
That said, the franchise has continued beyond him with MTV’s Scream TV series expected to air its long-awaited third season at some point in the near future, after a number of delays. There’s clearly life in ol’ Ghostface yet, then, so maybe he’ll go after Sydney again one day?