“I would have given him a much bigger life had I known this franchise was going to live and live,” franchise creator Kevin Williamson said.
The “Scream” cinematic universe could have looked very different had one of its original stars not been killed off.
“Scream 2” screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who originated the franchise, expressed regret at writing off Jamie Kennedy’s character Randy, who succumbed to Ghostface in the sequel. Cinephile Randy made a posthumous video appearance in “Scream 3” with sister Martha (Heather Matarazzo) assisting Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Dewey (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to track down the new serial killer in Los Angeles.
For the 25th anniversary of “Scream 2,” Williamson opened up about the sequel writing process and why he chose Randy to kick the bucket.
“I thought if you kill someone really important to the audience in the middle, it just ups the stakes,” Williamson told Entertainment Weekly. “Everything’s off the table. I knew we weren’t going to kill Sidney, I knew we weren’t going to kill Gale or Dewey. Those three characters, for ‘Scream 2,’ were safe, and so I had to look to the secondary characters.”
Williamson added, “I love Randy. I would have given him a much bigger life had I known this franchise was going to live and live. I would have loved for him to be a legacy character. At the time, I thought it would just be the punch in the gut the audience needed at that time, to really get mad, and get mad at the killer.”
Williamson kept the killer so under wraps that production leaked a “dummy script” written by Williamson’s assistant to throw off fans.
“We were sending the script out without the last 75 pages to do our best, but we knew it would come out. So my team wrote a dummy script, my assistant wrote it, and we had a fake script with Dewey as the killer, and we leaked the fake one,” the “Dawson’s Creek” writer said. “So by the time the real one got out there, there was no fuss, no one cared.”
Dewey (Arquette) does eventually die in 2021’s “Scream,” marking upcoming “Scream 6,” the first franchise installment sans both Arquette and Campbell. The iconic final girl exited the franchise amid salary disputes earlier this year.
“Scream 6” is set in New York City and stars Jenna Ortega, Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding. Cox is confirmed to be reprising her role, plus “Scream 4” star Hayden Panettiere. Samara Weaving, Dermot Mulroney, Henry Czerny, Tony Revolori, Jack Champion, Devyn Nekoda, Liana Liberato, and Josh Segarra also star. The film will premiere March 10.
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