Scream 3: 10 Things You Didn’t Know
By Jeremy Dick
SAN DIEGO, CA – JULY 27: Actor Kevin Bacon (L) and show creator Kevin Williamson attend FOX’s ‘The Following’ panel during Comic-Con International 2014 at San Diego Convention Center on July 27, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
6. Scream 3 is the only one not written by Kevin Williamson.
When pre-production on Scream 3 was beginning, filmmaker and writer Kevin Williamson— who penned the screenplays of the first two films— was busy directing Teaching Mrs. Tingle. He wanted to write Scream 3, but didn’t have the availability to develop a completed, fully fleshed-out script. So, instead, he turned in a 20-30 page outline of the story for another writer to expand upon.
In Williamson’s outline, Ghostface would return to Woodsboro, where the fictional movie Stab was being filmed. Williamson has since stated that his version of the plot would conclude with a teenage fan club of the Stab series all revealing themselves to be the murderers, and later developed elements of this story into the Kevin Bacon TV series, The Following.
Arlington Road writer Ehren Kruger was hired to write the script, and was pressured by the studio to move the setting away from the small town of Woodsboro to make it less reminiscent of the Columbine killings. As a result, he essentially threw away all of Williamson’s notes, and developed a new story which took place in Hollywood.
Scream 3 never truly felt like a Scream movie, and this is definitely one of the biggest reasons why. Williamson would later come back to the series to write Scream 4.
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