Scream 3: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

Photo from Dimension Films

8. The studio demanded the violence be toned way down.

The first Scream movie used 50 gallons of fake blood throughout the course of the film. Scream 2 was still pretty brutal, with 30 gallons of crimson liquid used for filming. Then, when Scream 3 came along, only 10 gallons were used, which seems much more light in comparison. The body count was still just as high, so what gives?

This was apparently the result of the studio’s insistence that the violence be toned down in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre. As horror films in particular had taken part of the blame for that tragedy, there were concerns about whether to even make the movie, which was in pre-production at the time. At the least, they wanted the violence to be as light as possible.

There’s the explanation for why there was more focus on the comedy and satirical elements of the story, and why it’s significantly less bloody than every other entry in the series. It had come out at a time when it had to either be light on violence or not exist at all.

The Columbine tragedy would also heavily affect the outcome of the story in other ways as well, which we’ll get to in this list.

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