The ‘Scream VI’ team drew unlikely inspiration from a rival slasher sequel

Scream VI is set to slice its way into theaters tomorrow, where it looks set to usher in a brand new era and ethos for the storied meta-horror franchise. Gone are the sunny, Californian backdrops of Woodsboro and Windsor, and in its place is the overstuffed concrete jungle of New York City. With Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott nowhere to be found this time around, we’re in for quite the departure from what we’ve seen up to now.

New York may be a popular destination for destruction on the big screen, but that usually comes in the form of natural disasters or Ultron, rather than more uniquely malicious serial killers. For Scream VI, the creative team had to get a bit inventive with their inspirations for a slasher movie set in the Big Apple, and were happy to borrow from a contemporary in that department.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Chad Villella revealed that Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was a key reference point for Scream VI, informing the team of what they should and shouldn’t do if they hoped to capture the unique fear factor that New York City offers.

“Oh, we definitely studied it, and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t have a boat in this! We wanted to be in the city, in the lived-in part of New York, that was very important to us. Obviously, being in a city is a scary thing. With Woodsboro, you’re able to be isolated very easily, but in a city, you could be surrounded by millions of people and still feel very alone. That’s exactly what we wanted to capture with this one.”

Following the events of 2022’s refresh, Scream VI follows the Carpenter siblings to New York City, where they hope to leave behind their traumatic, Ghostface-specific past. Joined by the Meeks-Martin twins and legacy survivors Kirby Reed and Gale Weathers, they quickly find themselves being hunted by a new killer , and it looks like it’s going to take all the main character energy in the world to come out of this one alive.

Scream VI releases to theaters on March 10.