{"id":83437,"date":"2025-08-20T22:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/83437\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T22:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:13:07","slug":"scream-7-director-quit-about-a-week-after-melissa-barrera-got-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/83437\/","title":{"rendered":"Scream 7 Director Quit ‘About a Week’ After Melissa Barrera Got Fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOriginal \u201cScream 7<\/a>\u201d director Christopher Landon<\/a> reveals in the new book \u201cYour Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror\u201d (via Entertainment Weekly<\/a>) that he exited the horror sequel \u201cabout a week after\u201d Spyglass Entertainment fired Melissa Barrera<\/a> due to social media posts she wrote about Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was no movie anymore. The whole script was about her,\u201d Landon said in referrence to Barrera\u2019s Sam Carpenter, the daughter of Ghostface killer Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) who headlined 2022\u2019s \u201cScream\u201d and 2024\u2019s \u201cScream VI\u201d. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t sign on to make \u2018a \u201cScream\u201d\u00a0movie.\u2019 I signed on to make\u00a0that\u00a0movie. When that movie no longer existed, I moved on,\u201d the director added.<\/p>\n

\n\tBarrera was fired from \u201cScream 7\u201d in November 2023, but Landon\u2019s departure wasn\u2019t announced until a month later despite him removing himself from the sequel much earlier than that. He said in the book that he wanted to deal privately with the fallout over Barrera\u2019s firing, but that became impossible when social media users sent him death threats under the assumption that he was the one who fired her.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was still sorting through my feelings about everything that had happened. When it all went down, it was something I was trying to process in a private and balanced way,\u201d Landon said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a public\u2011facing person, often people don\u2019t like that. People want an immediate reaction, and they want you to agree with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLandon announced his \u201cScream 7\u201d departure \u201cafter the threats got too intense,\u201d adding: \u201cThey were all screaming at someone who wasn\u2019t even on the movie anymore. There were a lot of people who thought I was some sort of villain. That really got in my head. It was painful, and it was painful to lose a dream job in such a sudden and bizarre way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director previously told Vanity Fair<\/a> the death threats he was receiving at the time were \u201chighly aggressive and really scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI got messages saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to find your kids, and I\u2019m going to kill them because you support child murder,\u2019\u201d Landon said. \u201cThe head of security at various studios and the FBI had to examine the threats\u2026 I did not fire [Melissa]. A lot of people think I had something to do with it, and it was not my doing. I had no control of the situation at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Landon announced his exit in December 2023, he wrote on social media that getting \u201cScream 7\u201d was \u201ca dream job that turned into a nightmare.\u201d He told\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/a>\u00a0the death threats against him are why.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI decided I didn\u2019t want to give any part of myself to that,\u201d Landon said about exiting the sequel. \u201cFor me, it was not worth it. I would rather put my efforts into something else, where I could feel appreciated and respected. The hate and abuse really spoiled it for me, and I lost my love for the idea of going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Williamson, the writer of the original \u201cScream\u201d movie and sequels \u201cScream 2\u201d and \u201cScream 4,\u201d ended up stepping in to direct the movie based on a totally new idea. Neve Campbell is returning as Sidney Prescott, who will once again be the center of the \u201cScream\u201d franchise after sitting out \u201cScream VI.\u201d The new movie opens in theaters Feb. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Original \u201cScream 7\u201d director Christopher Landon reveals in the new book \u201cYour Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,62871,134,62872,344,46163],"class_list":{"0":"post-83437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-christopher-landon","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-melissa-barrera","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-scream-7"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}