Why The Team Behind ‘Scream VI’ Ignored People’s Advice To Step Away From The Sequel

The horror requel Scream was an undeniable hit when it landed in movie theaters in January 2022. It was a critical success and revived a franchise that had been dormant for over a decade, grossing over $140 million against a $24 million budget.

Fourteen months later, Radio Silence, the creative team made up of directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and producer Chad Villella is back at the helm of the series with Scream VI, surprisingly against some people’s advice.

“I don’t think there was a single person in our lives that said, ‘Doing another one is a great idea,'” explained Bettinelli-Olpin. “They were like, ‘You guys did it. It worked, now step away,’ but the reality is, we had so much fun doing it, and we love the people we did it with, that there was no way we wouldn’t do it again if we had that opportunity.”

“All of the emotions were heightened. We were freaked out, worried, nervous, and scared, but we knew that in the wake of the success of the last one, we’d be able to take some swings that maybe we couldn’t take with Scream. That’s what really excited us.”

Gillett added that the assignment of the previous movie was to pay respect to the franchise they loved as fans. Shifting to the creator’s point of view changed their lives “in tremendous and amazing ways,” but they couldn’t do that again.

“It had to be something else,” the filmmaker said. “We played that note, we played the greatest hits, and now we have to do something totally unexpected.”

“Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven, the guys who created this, challenged themselves with every movie, trying to keep it interesting and exciting for them as creators and for the fans. Thankfully, they built a franchise that is only as good as the risks it takes, so there was a lot of permission granted us by the previous movies.”

Villella added, “Kevin giving his blessing and having been involved with him in the first movie set the table for this one. He did tell us at one point, ‘I didn’t know if this would work or if this would ever happen again, but what you did with the first movie made me want to see sequels and sequels and sequels to keep it going.'”

The results have already started to bear fruit at the box office, where Scream VI has already taken $5.7 million in previews. It’s predicted to secure a series-best opening weekend of around $35 million to $40 million.

This latest installment in the franchise moves Ghostface’s spree out of Woodsboro to New York. Although it’s not the first time an entry in the series has left its small-town origins behind, that didn’t stop some fans from being conflicted with the decision. The filmmakers have a theory on why that is.

“These movies are supposed to make you uneasy through these choices, but there is something, and this was addressed in Scream, that there is something about the way we all watch movies now where we want things to surprise us, as long as they surprise us within the same way,” mused Bettinelli-Olpin. “It’s like, ‘If you surprise me in a way, that’s not how I want to be surprised, then shame on you.’ We read that, and we were like, ‘That’s ****ing crazy.'”

Gillett added, “We can put going to LA in Scream 3 in its own box for a second, but Windsor College from Scream 2 and Woodsboro exist in a little bit of a fantasy land. They’re proxies for other small towns and universities, but New York is New York. It’s a real place, we know a lot about it, it’s in a ton of TV and movies, and it’s so influential.”

“The anxiety that we had was just that we were going to have to ground the movie and represent the terror in a different way, and Ghostface was going to have to be a little bit different because it’s now set in a familiar place. The intersection of those things is what’s terrifying about this movie. I think that was probably people’s anxiety, and we get it because we also had all that anxiety. We just had to bring it differently.”

Although principal photography was shot in Montreal, Canada, set dressed to make it look like New York, the Scream VI creative team wanted to embrace the spirit and certain iconic elements of Manhattan and the boroughs, including the subway.

The train is the location of one of the most memorable set pieces in the film. It involves an ensemble of extras decked out in Halloween costumes, including masks portraying some of Hollywood’s most feared and revered titans of terror.

Getting clearances to that imagery can take time, effort, and a lot of money.

“That whole sequence was an insane puzzle,” Gillett confessed. “All the departments were solving it from a different angle which is the only reason we pulled it off. Specifically, to the clearances, we were weirdly surprised by how ultimately easy it was to get all those masks cleared.”

There were specific provisions that the team had to adhere to, such as Leatherface not being able to wield a chainsaw.

“They couldn’t be doing the thing that made them the villain you know from the movies, but the masks were actually weirdly easy to clear,” the co-director continued. “We also couldn’t use them in marketing materials. You can’t use those slasher movie icons for marketing our slasher movie.”

“There was a minute there where we thought for sure this was an insane ask, and there was no way we were going to get cleared what we needed to get cleared. The sequence is so dependent on the cast showing up in that subway and having those recognizable figures present in the subway car. We found out that it was okay in prep. Someone was like, ‘Hey, by the way, guys, the masks cleared,’ and we were like, ‘I’m sorry, what?'”

They also wanted to ensure that the legacy of the franchise’s boogeyman was present without it being too obvious.

“We had so many conversations about it,” Bettinelli-Olpin recalled. “We wanted one hero Ghostface mask from the fifth Scream movie, three sort of crappy ones, a homemade one from the TV show, and so on. A lot of work went into tracking how many specific Ghostface masks were going to be there.”

The Radio Silence trio also confirmed that the subway scene on the subway is littered with genre easter eggs for fans to discover.

“A fun one is to do with the movie Videodrome,” Gillett concluded. “There’s a shot where one of the passengers is wearing a costume resembling the one Debbie Harry wore in the movie. It doesn’t just look like it, though; it is the actual costume. There are a ton of really fun, very craft-specific things on that train that we’re so proud of.”