Following the recent casting of Melissa Barrera, Spyglass Media and Paramount Pictures have added a brand new cast member to the fifth installment of the Scream films with Deadline bringing word that 17-year-old actress Jenna Ortega (You, Jane the Virgin) has been tapped to join the upcoming reboot. Ortega and Barrera are the first two newcomers who are set to join the slasher franchise along with alums David Arquette and Courteney Cox.
Further details about her character are still being kept under wraps. Ortega will next be seen in films such as Netflix’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen, the Jennifer Garner-led comedy film Yes Day and the Michael Bay-produced romantic thriller Songbird.
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Arquette became the first actor from the original franchise to sign on for the fifth film in the series, with Cox signing on at the end of July for the film and word coming earlier this year that lead heroine Neve Campbell is currently in talks to reprise her role of Sidney Prescott.
While plot details are currently scarce, it is being reported that the film will follow “a woman returning to her home town to try to find out who has been committing a series of vicious crimes.”
The new film will be produced by Project X Entertainment’s James Vanderbilt (Zodiac), who is also co-writing the screenplay with Guy Busick (Ready or Not), as well as Paul Neinstein and William Sherak for Spyglass, with original screenwriter Kevin Williamson executive producing with Radio Silence’s third member Chad Villella.
The first film, released in 1996, was a surprise smash upon its debut, helping to revive the horror genre for the decade and becoming the highest-grossing slasher movie of all-time until it was dethroned by last year’s Halloween reboot. The first’s success spawned a franchise that includes three sequels, the first of which remained equally as successful as the first while the previous two saw middling box office returns and mixed reviews.
After years of struggling to get another film off the ground, MTV picked up a series adaptation that became a cult hit, with two well-received seasons from fans before it was passed off to VH1 for its rebooted third season, which saw mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and audiences alike, but was a minor improvement in the ratings from the second season.
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The Scream revival marks the second major horror franchise reboot Spyglass is working on, with the studio developing a remake of the Clive Barker cult horror classic Hellraiser, with David S. Goyer (Terminator: Dark Fate) attached to pen the script.
Neve Campbell (Party of Five, The Craft) has played Sidney Prescott in the original blockbuster hit Scream way back in 1996. Since then, she became the face of the popular slasher franchise as she also starred in three follow-up sequels. The most recent entry, Scream 4, released in 2011 and grossed $97 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. Campbell recently appeared in Netflix’s House of Cards and the film Castle in the Ground.
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