When Scream was released in 1996, it not only revived a flagging subgenre bogged down by formulaic clichés, but also reinvented it in several ways, one of the most prominent being the revelation that there were in fact two masked killers knocking off Woodsboro residents. This idea was reprised in the sequel, but altered in Scream 3, which had only a single murderer. However, in the original script, the formula was maintained.
Scream 3 begins with Sidney shielded from the world in remote seclusion, only to be lured out of hiding when the cast of Stab 3, the latest in a series of slashers inspired by her traumatic experiences, begin being killed. This Ghostface turns out to be Roman Bridger, the film’s director, who is also secretly Sidney’s half-brother and jealous of the loving family upbringing she had, and was the instigator of all the events dating back to the series’ first installment. In the initial draft of the script, though, he had help in the form of Angelina Tyler, the actress now portraying the fictional Sidney, who was originally intended to be Roman’s lover and a forgotten former classmate of Sidney who desired the same level of fame afforded her by being at the epicenter of the original murders. In her deluded mind, she wanted to make her idol proud.
Fragments alluding to such guilt remain in the finished film, of course, with several instances of suspicion being shunted in Angelina’s direction, as well as her being killed off screen with nobody to witness it, which would have originally led to the revelation that she was still alive during the climax’s unmasking. There were also times where Roman would have needed to be in two places at once for everything to tie together, moments where Angelina would have been the one in the costume.
Scream 3 underwent regular and significant rewrites up to and including during filming – something metafictionally alluded to in the movie itself – and the removal of Angelina as a killer has been stated to have been mandated by the producers, presumably referring to Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Although if anything, you’d retrospectively think that the reveal of a movie producer being an amoral sexual predator involved in gang raping Sidney’s mother as a young aspiring actress would be the main plot point that they’d not want people thinking too much about.