Season 2 of the series Reginald the Vampire is set to premiere on Syfy on May 8th at 10pm, and with just three weeks to go until that date arrives, a trailer has made its way online. Some of you can check it out in the embed above but it’s geo-blocked, so some of you might not be able to see it, depending on where you are. Don’t blame me, this was Syfy’s doing.
Starring Jacob Batalon (who played Peter Parker’s best friend Ned in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, with appearances in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame along the way), Reginald theVampire centers on an unlikely hero, Reginald Baskin (Batalon) who tumbles headlong into a world populated by beautiful, fit and vain vampires as an unlikely hero who will have to navigate every kind of obstacle — the girl he loves but can’t be with, a bully manager at work and the vampire chieftain who wants him dead. Fortunately, Reginald discovers he has a few unrecognized powers of his own. Season 2 has the following synopsis: Reginald Andres finally got his life together – when he was turned into a vampire. While he doesn’t fit into the stereotypical expectations of what a vampire looks like – he’s not chiseled or classically handsome – Reginald has found his place amongst an unlikely cohort that includes the cool vampire who sired him, the former vampire chieftain turned unexpected ally (or is she?), and his co-worker/former girlfriend. A show with a lot of heart and just enough blood, “Reginald the Vampire” proves the undead life is just as complicated as life itself.
Batalon is joined in the cast by Em Haine (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Mandela Van Peebles (Mayor of Kingstown), and Savannah Basley (SurrealEstate).
Reginald the Vampire season 2 is coming our way from Great Pacific Media Inc., Modern Story Company, December Films, and Cineflix Studios. Harley Peyton, fresh off the Chucky series, writes, executive produces, and serves as showrunner on Reginald the Vampire. Jeremiah Chechik executive produces alongside Todd Berger, Lindsay Macadam, Brett Burlock, and Peter Emerson. Reginald the Vampire is based on author Johnny B. Truant’s Fat Vampire series of novels.
Did you watch the first season of Reginald the Vampire, and are you looking forward to season 2? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The recent release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth undoubtedly has made a lot of fans nostalgic for the original PlayStation RPG. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people are going back to play it since it’s on just about every modern system you can own these days. Rebirth remakes moments from OG FF7, but it also has…
The recent release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth undoubtedly has made a lot of fans nostalgic for the original PlayStation RPG. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people are going back to play it since it’s on just about every modern system you can own these days. Rebirth remakes moments from OG FF7, but it also has…
With the first episode of The Sympathizer premiering this past weekend on HBO, the world is seeing just how wild this adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is. A stunning blend of war story, satire, and powerful drama, The Sympathizer boasts impressive performances from a cast featuring Hoa Xuande, Sandra Oh, and Robert Downey Jr in five distinct performances. Written by Don McKellar alongside Oldboy director Park Chan-wook, The Sympathizer is incredible. The seven-part series will be a big contender for series of the year. I got the chance to speak with the cast and producers about bringing the book to the screen, and their insights are below. Check it out.
First, I asked Sandra Oh about her layered experience making recent films like Umma, which focused on Korean identity, and the comedy Quiz Lady with Awkwafina, which touched on race and culture without making it a central part of the plot. With The Sympathizer, those elements are blended together. I asked how she balanced light and dark in playing a character like Sofia Mori.
Sandra Oh: “I think I’ll answer it by saying that I feel Miss Mori is a full character. I understood the tone of the piece. There is satire going on, but that’s actually mostly played by Robert Downey Jr’s characters. The satire is mostly in those archetypal pieces. So, for me, I’ve tried to make it as grounded as possible, and if you saw all the episodes, you’ll come to find that she has a revelation. And also a deepening of her examination of what it means to be an Asian American woman. So I’d say it’s not so much that I must balance it. She herself, I think, was already balanced. Yeah.”
Next up, I spoke with executive producers Susan Downey and Niv Fichman. I started by letting Susan know my wife went to high school with her and was in her creative writing class, giving the super-producer a flashback to a long time ago. I then asked them if the plan was always to focus on adapting The Sympathizer as a standalone series or whether they had considered building the sequel novel into their plans.
Susan Downey:“It really was just adapting The Sympathizer, and that was it. The fact that there are additional books is exciting to me and Niv. But just for us right now, there have been no official conversations about doing anything with any of these projects. It’s important to launch that first one correctly, keep your eye on that, and not think too far beyond that. So our hope is that an audience finds this, loves it, and demands more of the Captain.”
Niv Fichman: “Yeah, I mean, if you read The Sympathizer, the second book, it’s so different from the first. And so we just have not been in that creative space yet, you know, we hope to go there one day. But yeah, we’re concentrating on this series premiering. We’re actually still finishing the show. I think you have all seven episodes, but the final ones are not the fully mixed versions, as you know. So yeah, a couple more weeks on this post-production, even though we’re launching it tonight, before we even consider what comes next.”
The Captain’s best friends, Bon and Man, are two key supporting characters in the series. Bon, played by Fred Nguyen Khan, and Man, played by Duy Nguyen, do not get to share much screen time, but their paths in the series are individually very harrowing and dramatic. The two share a memorable scene towards the end of the final episode, and I asked the actors what that sequence was like to film opposite one another.
Fred Nguyen Khan: “It was a weird way to shoot actually because when I was acting towards the camera, he, Duy, wasn’t there. We shot it at a different time. Yeah, we shot at different times. So, I was just picturing one of my closest friends lying there. It’s just like it does trigger the emotion that I needed.”
Duy Nguyen: “So that’s actually one of the last things we shot. It was towards the last stretch of the production. So everybody’s gotten so close and so it was easy to draw the emotion needed. Even in episode one, you know, to me, it was the emotion came out easily just because I have Fred on set with me and also how, how heartbreaking the story is. Just really imagining my friends seeing me for the last time and maybe we’ll never see each other again. We shot that very quickly just because you don’t even have to give me notes. Just tell me where to look and I just imagine Fred and that was it.”
I also chatted with veteran actors Toan Le, who portrays the Captain’s boss, The General, and Ky Duyen, who portrays The General’s wife, Madame. I also spoke with Vy Le, a new actor who plays the General and Madame’s daughter, Lana. I asked all three about which other castmember in the series they were impressed by on set.
Toan Le: “I think it has to be Hoa who plays the Captain. Even though Hoa has had experience, but never in a project this big that is so demanding. Not just remembering the lines but the lines in two languages and be able to speak both eloquently. But he did it, you know, he had no time to prepare for it. Every day, just pounding it and just but the result is is just incredible that he has achieved. So I have a lot of admiration for Hoa and his abilities.”
Ky Duyen: “Yeah, I the same thing for Hoa. But since you already said all the good things about Hoa, the two actually three other people that I’m impressed with are the ones on either side of me. First of all, Toan Le because he’s so mild-mannered outside. Yet as the General, he’s like nothing like the General on the outside. So that shows me his acting ability is incredible. A second person I was impressed by is Vy Le, who has never acted before. But to see her, she is so natural. She makes it effortless. The third person I was impressed with was Duy Nguyen because, outside again, he’s so soft-spoken. He’s nice. Just when I watched him on the screen, I was scared there were parts where I would fast forward, and he just embodied this evil character and, wow, just the range of acting beside what they’re really like outside. So, yeah, those are my favorites.
Vy Le: “I could sit here and talk about every single person on the cast for hours. But, I was, I think I was most struck by, Robert Downey Jr and Sandra Oh. Honestly, they are just masters of their craft. They knew exactly what they were doing. They really took command of, of, you know, their work and the, the room, and they just, it was very inspiring. It was just watching them. That’s how I knew. Like that’s what I aspired to be like.”
Last up, I spoke with longtime actor Kieu Chinh, who has been in films for decades, including a role in The Joy Luck Club, about her role as The Major’s Mother. She was accompanied by Phanxine, who plays her son, The Major. I asked Kieu about a comment she made about all of the interesting projects led by Asian casts, including Everything Everywhere All At Once and Crazy Rich Asians, and if she thinks there is a realism in The Sympathizer that Vietnamese audiences will recognize and whether they will have difficult watching some of the more horrific scenes.
Kieu Chinh: “Yes, some, some are so real, so related to the history. But that’s not all; like in the movie you follow later, you will see that this is about espionage, loyal betrayal, loving, and fun together. I know it, it is not about only war; of course, it is based on a war story. So it’s there. And this is the first time you know, years back when you see a movie or series related to Asian faces. For example, long years back, you see The King and I with Yul Brynner, a Caucasian playing an Asian. But nowadays, Hollywood casts Asian for Asian, Vietnamese for Vietnamese roles. So that is a big change that, that we are are very happy about it. And we see that especially in The Sympathizer, the Asian community comes together like an ensemble. Director Park from Korea, and Sandra OH and the primarily Vietnamese cast. We are all actors working together. We don’t talk about nationality or discrimination or something like that anymore. And I believe it’s about time because movie language is international. So especially in this project, we have an ensemble of many different nationalities working together in front of the camera and behind the camera.”
Phanxine: “Even though this is like a fictional fantasy in a way, they have true emotion. For example, I tell you the story; there’s one extra I met on set. We played, we’re doing the scene at the refugee camp where, you know, like the General comes and one lady stands up and yells at the general. This extra came to me, and we chatted and she said that, like in the script, it calls for an angry woman. So she’s supposed to be very angry. Still, then when the camera rolls, she feltlike all her memories about those days when she was in the refugee camp just like come back to her in that moment, and she keeps reliving that moment again, and she can’t hold her tears, and instead of angry, she feels like really hurt, really sad. When she said the line, she was in tears. She told me that when she did that, she worried that Director Park was really mad at her because she was supposed to be angry. But Director Park came in and said he loved it; it was amazing. I was born after the war, and I live in Vietnam. So that is a part of the story I don’t know, but this woman had that emotion. I feel like maybe this series when it comes out, people will talk about this kind of like the untold story of many people. And then, like in my generation, we will have a chance to hear this story again.”
The Sympathizer is now airing on HBO and streaming on Max.
Welcome back to the Grid, user. Disney is finally following up their cult franchise with a new entry, Tron: Ares. While the new entry in the series does not seemingly feature the Flynn family, at least for now, their legacy will be put into further question as a sophisticated program escapes from the game and ventures into our world. Jared Leto, who had a big swing and a miss with his last franchise attempt, Morbius, is heading up the cast for this continuation. Disney recently unveiled details of Tron: Ares‘ release at last week’s CinemaCon.
CBR.com has reported on an on-set video taken during a night shoot on the production. The video was posted to social media and seems to show a scene that takes place in a city street with cars stalled in the middle of the road. Jared Leto is seen in full view in his character’s costume. Leto is seen with visible face injuries as he walks by his trailer which imply the scene takes place around an action sequence and his character will encounter real-world damages.
#Spoiler Jared Leto filming Tron: Ares tonight in Vancouver, Canada.
Tron: Ares “follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.”
Tron: Ares is a follow-up to Disney’s 1982 seminal science fiction film Tron and the 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy. Jared Leto leads the cast of Tron: Ares, with Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, and Gillian Anderson filling out the primary cast. Tron: Ares is in Vancouver production and slated for a 2025 release. Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Kon-Tiki, Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) directs from material written by Steven Lisberger, Bonnie MacBird, and Jack Thorne.
We first sawTron: Ares in February when Disney shared a teaser image from the forthcoming sequel. Speaking about the forthcoming Tron film, Rønning said, “I’m excited to be part of the Tron franchise and bring this new film to fans around the world. Tron: Ares builds upon the legacy of cutting-edge design, technology and storytelling. Now more than ever, it feels like the right time to return to the Grid.”
The year was 1985 when Super Mario Bros. took the Nintendo Entertainment System by storm; Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes debuted in newspapers, and two unlikely friends named Marty McFly and Emmett Lathrop Brown piloted cinema’s most iconic time machine to a year when Panama hats and kitten heels were all the rage, 1955.
Fiercely protected at a level akin to Ghostbusters and Star Wars by millennials worldwide, Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future sits enthroned at Nostalgia Mountain’s top. The original film has spawned two sequels, a cartoon series, video game adaptations, a Broadway musical, and more. But how does it hold up by today’s standards? Strap on your seatbelt, and prepare yourselves to see some serious shit because this is Back to the Future Revisited.
In 1977, Robert Zemeckis did the unthinkable. He bulldozed into Amblin Entertainment without an appointment, heading straight for Steven Spielberg’s office. Like a shower curtain ring salesman ready to dazzle potential customers with his wares, Zemeckis showed Spielberg his short film, A Field of Honor. Impressed with the presentation and seeing potential in Zemeckis’ work, Spielberg turned the up-and-coming filmmaker loose on the Beatles film I Want to Hold Your Hand as the project’s director and co-writer. Zemeckis tapped his friend and writing partner Bob Gale for the task, establishing a union that would become synonymous with excellence in the film industry.
While the film didn’t inspire Beatlemania’s levels of excitement from audiences, critics adored the comedic feature and recognized Zemeckis’ talent as a promising director. After establishing themselves as a dependable duo, Zemeckis and Gale partnered with Speilberg again for the war comedy 1941, featuring Saturday Night Live and SCTV alums Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and John Candy. Despite starring some of the funniest people in entertainment, 1941 went off like a dud grenade at the box office. Not to be discouraged, the Bobs, as people liked to call them, wrote another comedy with Spielberg executive producing called Used Cars. The film is about two competing car salespeople, with Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, and Gerrit Graham leading the cast. Regrettably, Used Cars was also a lemon for the team, making the Bobs oh for three at the box office.
While some filmmakers, after three failures, would consider their gooses cooked, Zemeckis and Gale continued to plug away at their ideas, determined to make a name for themselves in Hollywood. While Bob Gale was taking a breather, he visited his parents, where he stumbled upon his father’s old yearbooks. As he leafed through the tattered tome of academia’s past, he discovered his dad was president of his class. Surprised by the revelation, Gale’s wheels started turning as a question burned in his mind: Who was the president of my high school class, and would we have been friends?
Gale brought the idea to Zemeckis, and they started milling around with a story about a high school student who travels back in time and meets his parents. Rather than partner with Spielberg again, at the risk of earning a reputation for riding the filmmaker’s coattails, the Bobs went in a different direction. They took their idea to Frank Price, the president of Columbia Pictures. Price, known for taking risks on unconventional plots, loved what he heard and greenlit the project in seconds.
With Columbia Pictures eager to bring the Bobs aboard, the duo started writing the script for what would eventually become Back to the Future. Zemeckis and Gale returned in 1981 with their unconventional time-travel comedy, ready to turn back the clock, but time had become their enemy. Studios were scrambling to crack the code of general interest, and if there’s one constant they could depend on, it’s that the 80s was a horny time in American history.
Target audiences couldn’t stop thinking about sex, so comedies like Porkys, Loose Screws, Joysticks, Weird Science, Party Camp, and Revenge of the Nerds garnered more eyeballs than a science fiction comedy about returning to the prudish 1950s. Rather than scrap the concept, the Bobs revised their Back to the Future script to make Marty and Doc Brown’s time-traveling adventure more appealing, resulting in several iterations that never saw the light of day.
Aiming to buck tradition, Zemeckis and Gale set out to make a different time-travel movie. While other films treat the past as if written in stone, Zemeckis and Gale chose to explore the Butterfly Effect, meaning that even slight alterations could drastically change the future. In other words, if you travel back in time and prevent your parents from meeting one another, there’s a chance you won’t exist. The concept is a perfect narrative hook to explore the consequences of time travel, and the Bobs were determined to transform dire consequences into comedy.
After taking a break from Back to the Future, Zemeckis directed the 1984 action-adventure film Romancing the Stone, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny Devito. The film became a surprise success, giving Zemeckis the leverage he needed to return to Back to the Future. Since Price eventually passed on the project, Zemeckis brought his time-travel comedy to Steven Speilberg at Amblin Entertainment. Finally, with Gale and Neil Canton producing and Universal Pictures in charge of distribution, Back to the Future had a home, and the task of bringing the legendary pop culture classic to life could truly begin.
Racing into theaters at 88 miles per hour in 1985, Back to the Future is a movie that leaves an indelible mark on those who connect with it. I was four years old when I saw Back to the Future at the Rocky Point Drive-In Theater on the North Shore of Long Island, New York. Some will call foul, saying I can’t possibly recall a trip to the theater at such an early age. To them, I’d propose that some experiences are so monumental that even if they feel like a dream after so many years, they can reside in your memory forever.
United Artists owned the Rocky Point Drive-In, located slightly north of Route 25A in Rocky Point. Nestled in a dark, wooded area, the theater opened on June 16, 1961, with screenings of John Wayne’s The Alamo and the Robert Hinkle-directed Western Ole Rex. In 1985, theater security was lax. There were no security cameras, and audiences paid a flat fee for anyone they could fit in their car. Nearby speakers at each angled parking space provided audio for the film, and theater owners sold concessions at the back of the theater lot.
The night of our screening, my mom and dad threw my sister and me into the backseat of our 1983 powder blue Ford Station Wagon. Thankfully, Back to the Future was rated PG, so there was no need to hide beneath a blanket in what we called the “back-back” of the car. Lying like the dead beneath a comforter – often used to visit Cedar Beach in the hamlet of Mount Siani – was how my parents got my sister and me into R-rated movies at the drive-in back in the day. I’ll never forget when we saw Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain starring Prince or John McTiernan’s Predator after successfully infiltrating the outdoor cinema beneath a blanket sprinkled with leftover grains of sand and random pieces of dried seaweed.
After some Coming Attractions and the 1957 version of “Let’s All Go to the Lobby,” the movie began to play just as the summer sun went to sleep. If there’s one thing I love most in life, it’s music, and for that reason, I distinctly remember the moment I connected with the film’s co-lead, Micheal J. Fox, and his iconic portrayal of Marty McFly. When Marty enters Doc Brown’s house during the film’s opening credits and hooks his Erlewine Chiquita guitar up to Doc’s complex speaker system, I knew Marty was the coolest movie character I’d seen at that point in my short existence. I imagined Marty as the teenage version of the guy in the 1981 Maxell commercial, paralyzed by a wave of relentless sound. If I had Doc’s setup today, I’d crank it to eleven and blast artists like Tool, Sleep Token, Failure, Dizzy, Bjork, Rachel Fannan, Rituals of Mine, HEALTH, and The Faint, to name a few.
Complimenting Fox’s performance throughout all three films in the Back to the Future trilogy is Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown, a fast-talking man of science, unafraid to push the boundaries of reality to achieve the unthinkable. Llyod’s wily, frazzled, and hyper-intelligent Doc Brown brings an element of believability to the outrageous science on display. While I don’t think we can rupture the fictitious laws of time by combining a flux capacitor with a car going 88 miles per hour, Doc Brown makes us feel this impossibility is within his grasp.
Marty and Doc’s on-screen chemistry is the stuff of cinema legend, whether they’re working alongside one another to ensure Marty’s existence after he inadvertently sabotages his parents’ courtship or changing future events to prevent a despicable bully from committing sexual assault. Fox and Lloyd are a dream team, making Eric Stoltz’s exit from the project a blessing in disguise. Stolz almost played Marty in the film. However, his lack of comedic timing, distracting method acting approach, and desire to play Marty as a more tragic character eventually got him fired from the movie. As a result, portions of the film needed to be re-shot, with Fox bringing an entirely new energy to previously completed scenes.
Since we’re making this personal, I can’t think of Doc Brown without recalling my late friend, Harry Jackson, whom I met more than a decade ago on JoBlo’s Movie Fan Central message boards. Harry loved Back to the Future. So much so he even played Doc Brown in the 2019 commercial for Farpoint Toys & Collectibles, called “Collector’s Assemble.” After pulling up in an actual Deloreon, Harry’s Doc Brown leads an assembly of iconic characters to Farpoint in the promo. Much like Doc, Harry loved embracing the unknown and inspired smiles on those he met across time.
While I was too young for celebrity crushes during my first viewing of Back to the Future, Lea Thompson’s Lorraine Baines McFly made my gigawatts jump in later viewings. While Lorraine’s attraction to Marty is taboo, Gale and Zemeckis walk a delicate line throughout the film, keeping the creepiness of Lorraine’s uninformed lust to a playful minimum. Thompson’s performance is one of the film’s many highlights as she navigates a bizarre love triangle between herself, Fox’s Marty, and Crispin Glover’s George McFly.
With a reputation for being difficult on set, Crispin Glover’s George McFly is one of the actor’s most memorable roles. Zemeckis wanted Glover to tone his performance down, but it’s perfect. Only some actors act awkwardly and strangely, like the spindly Crispin Glover. His transformation from a pervy “bird watcher” to a man worthy of being a secret character in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is a joy to watch, and I would not be surprised if some viewed George’s boost in confidence as something to aspire to.
Then there’s Thomas F. Wilson’s Biff Tannen, perhaps cinema’s most iconic bully. Wilson owns the role of Biff, with his intimidating stature, relentless acts of subjugation, and a motley crew of cackling henchmen. Biff is a villain Back to the Future fans love to hate, thanks to Wilson balancing Biff’s repugnance, skull-crushing noogies, and penchant for farm animal taunts.
Of course, a Back to the Future retrospective would only be complete with getting behind the wheel of the film’s true star, the DeLorean time machine. Developed under the watchful eye of Lawrence Paull, with design from artist Ron Cobb and illustrator Andrew Probert, the DeLorean is undoubtedly among the Top 3 time machines across cinema, alongside the Tardis from Doctor Who and Bill and Ted’s Telephone Booth. Growing up, the DeLoreon was the prized car in my Micro Machine collection. That car went everywhere with me and smoked any challenger in a high-speed race around my repurposed Hot Wheels race tracks.
Surprisingly, Doc and Marty’s time machine was a refrigerator early on, but Spielberg nixed the idea with concerns children might attempt to crawl into one. Could you imagine time-traveling refrigerators depicted on t-shirts, lunch boxes, and movie posters? Neither can I. Thank you, Mr. Spielberg—way to see the future with that miscalculation.
In the Nostalgia Museum of my mind, Back to the Future stands proudly alongside films like The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, Return to Oz, The Goonies, and whatever horror movie played on the living room television – my parents were seasoned horror enthusiasts. They never restricted me from watching movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, The Shining, and more. It was an interesting, nightmare-filled upbringing, I assure you.
Like its time-travelling premise, Back to the Future stands the test of time in more ways than one. Discussing popular science-fiction in cinema without waxing rhapsodic about Marty and Doc’s first escapade to the 1950s and back again is impossible. Hollywood keeps threatening to remake Back to the Future, but all attempts have failed for one reason or another. No one can replicate or even hope to match the look and feel of Zemeckis’s classic adventure. Back to the Future is a film that keeps giving back to multiple generations of fans, with memorabilia passed on or movie marathons arranged by obsessed parents.
It’s been a blast to revisit Back to the Future in 2024, knowing that a film released many years ago still leaves a lasting impression. Thanks for taking this trip in a DeLorean down Memory Lane. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to make like a tree and get out of here.
Like an atomic bomb, Amazon dropped all eight episodes of the Fallout TV show on April 10. The show is full of easter eggs, lore drops, and big implications for the future of the franchise. But some fans were quick to suggest that the show may change the series’ past as well, even arguing that it retcons out entire…
Like an atomic bomb, Amazon dropped all eight episodes of the Fallout TV show on April 10. The show is full of easter eggs, lore drops, and big implications for the future of the franchise. But some fans were quick to suggest that the show may change the series’ past as well, even arguing that it retcons out entire…
A lot of Scream franchise fans were hoping Melissa Barrera would reprise the role of Samantha Carpenter from Scream (2022) and Scream VI in a third Scream movie, and it has been said that the directors of those films, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, wanted to return for a Scream 7 that would wrap up the Sam Carpenter story as a trilogy. But that’s not how it worked out. The directors went off to makeAbigail, and Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media weren’t willing to wait for them to circle back to Scream 7. So Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett were, as they put it, “exited” from the project and it started moving forward without them… only to hit a series of speed bumps. Including the day when Barrera was fired after comments she made about the Israel-Hamas war didn’t go over well with executives at Spyglass. So there will be no Barrera or Samantha Carpenter in Scream 7 – and Barrera is okay with that, because she’s satisfied with where the ending of Scream VI left her character.
Barrera told Collider, “I feel like the ending of Scream VI was a very good ending, and so I don’t feel like ‘Ugh, I got left in the middle.’ No, I think people, the fans, were wanting a third movie to continue that arc, and apparently, the plan was a trilogy, even though I was only contracted for two movies . So, I did my two movies, and I’m fine. I’m good with that. I got two – that’s more than most people get. When you’re on a TV show, and it gets canceled, you can’t harp on things, you gotta move on. That’s the nature of this industry too, I get excited for the next job, I get excited for the next skin I get to put on. It’s exciting to create a different character. So yeah, I feel good. I did what I set out to do. It was always meant to be two movies for me, ’cause that was my contract, and so everything is perfect.“
Also not returning for Scream 7 is Jenna Ortega, who played Samantha’s sister Tara. Ortega allegedly asked for a substantial pay raise – and as we saw when Neve Campbell dropped out of Scream VI due to a pay dispute, these pay issues don’t tend to work out. Spyglass and Paramount had hired Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon to direct the sequel, but he dropped out as everything crumbled around him.
Scream 7 had to be reworked after the Carpenter sisters were out of the story. It was recently announced that Neve Campbell is returning to the lead as franchise heroine Sidney Prescott, and it’s rumored that her franchise co-star Courteney Cox and Scream 3 cast member Patrick Dempsey may be returning as well. Original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson will be directing the film from a screenplay by 2022’s Scream and Scream VI writer Guy Busick, who crafted the story with his co-writer on the fifth and sixth films, James Vanderbilt. (Vanderbilt is also a producer on the most recent sequels.)
Do you agree with Melissa Barrera that Scream VI was a satisfactory ending for Samantha Carpenter? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
We’re in something of a live-action adaptation renaissance in Hollywood right now, what with the Barbie doll coming to life thanks to Margot Robbie, and Netflix turning a bunch of anime into real-life shows (to varying degrees of success). The hit anime and manga One-Punch Man is getting a similar treatment by Sony…
(@fak3plastic) 
