Scream 5 Cast Were Given Fake Scripts to Keep the Ending a Secret

After officially wrapping up production on the new Scream movie last month, producer William Sherak has opened up about Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s highly-anticipated fifth installment, revealing that some members of cast don’t really know the identity of the sequel’s Ghostface. In a recent interview with Cinema Blend, Sherak confirmed that in order to keep the film’s ending a secret, they’ve decided to hand out multiple versions of the script to the cast during filming

“I think the two things to remember for us. One is there are multiple versions of the draft out there and most of the cast don’t know if they have the right version or not,” Sherak said. “So, we’ve been playing that game with them as well. And the fun of a Scream movie is that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around. So, the goal is to keep that going for as long as possible and have fun with it.”

This technique is actually one of the clever strategies that directors and producers had been using nowadays, especially with high profile projects like Scream which involves many twists and turns. This was notably used by Marvel Studios during the back-to-back production of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame in order to keep most of cast from knowing which ones will be dusted be Thanos in Infinity War.

David Arquette became the first actor from the original franchise to sign on for the fifth film in the series, with Courteney Cox signing on at the end of July for the film and after word coming earlier this year that lead heroine Campbell was in talks to reprise her role of Sidney Prescott.

Alongside the returning vets, including Scream 4‘s Marley Shelton, other new cast members for the film include Kyle Gallner (Ghosts of War), Jasmin Savoy Brown (The Leftovers) and Mikey Madison (Better Things), who join previously cast Jack Quaid (The Boys), Melissa Barrera (Vida), Jenna Ortega (The Babysitter: Killer Queen), Mason Gooding (Booksmart) and Dylan Minnette (13 Reasons Why).

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.”

Set to debut on January 14, 2022, Scream is co-directed by Ready or Not filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett from a screenplay co-written by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick(Ready or Not). It will be produced by Project X Entertainment’s James Vanderbilt 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.

Scream 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.