With the highly-anticipated Scream VI preparing to make its theatrical debut this week, the film crew, including its producer Chad Villella and directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, recently opened up about the pressure they felt trying to uphold Wes Craven’s legacy.
Craven, who directed the first four installments of the Scream franchise and several Nightmare on Elm Street films, passed away in 2015 after battling brain cancer. During an interview with Indiewire, Bettinelli-Olpin told the publication that the trio felt immense pressure because they were taking responsibility for a beloved franchise and didn’t want to mess it up. Bettinelli-Olpin said,
“I think we really felt the responsibility of what that meant to be stepping into Wes’ shoes, to be following up that legacy, and we didn’t want to fk it up.”
Further in the conversation, Gillett opened up that despite the fear, the trio’s inspiration behind creating the newer installments of the Scream franchise stemmed from the feeling they, as fans, experienced when watching Craven’s past projects. While sharing details about the filmmaking process, he explained,
“We’re like junkies, chasing that [feeling], with these movies. It’s about trying to find the alchemy of those things in everything that we do. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s not scary enough. We should push a little farther. Oh, that could be funny. Oh, that moment’s not sensitive enough.’ So much of what we’re looking for when we’re chasing that intuition is because of a feeling that movie gave us back in the day.”
Bettinelli-Olpin seconded Gillett’s previous sentiments by revealing that the team took notes on what made Craven’s work so timeless and rewatchable despite the many decades since its release.
“We watched all of them over and over and over. Especially the first one. … It’s not so much that we’re trying to emulate it, it’s that we’re trying to emulate the feeling it gave us, and that’s such an important part of it. There’s something about a movie like ‘Scream’ and a lot of these really timeless movies, that while your experience changes, what the movie is doing is so effective that you can watch it over and over again. And for us as filmmakers, [it was important] to learn from that and try to really understand what that is and how it’s working.”
Since the debut of Scream in 1996, the entire franchise has generated over $744 million worldwide and received fair or positive reviews from fans and critics alike. Aside from the numerous sequels, the franchise’s success also spawned a hit MTV show with the same name. Scream the series aired on the network for three seasons from 2015 to 2019.
Fans can catch Scream VI when the film premieres in theaters on March 10. As for the other projects, viewers can watch them on any streaming platform for a small fee.