Scream is ramping up its promotional campaign for the franchise’s upcoming fifth movie, and the film’s villain is getting the TikTok treatment with some Halloween-themed filters and effects. Celebrating the release of the new Scream trailer, Paramount Pictures has partnered with TikTok to develop a Text-to-Speech option that features the iconic and creepy voice of the series’ masked killer. Notably, both David Arquette and Drew Barrymore, who both appeared in the original 1996, have both tried out the new feature, which fans can check out here and here.
The new Scream brings back Arquette and his fellow franchise stars Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox. Interestingly, the new trailer opens with Woodsboro teen Tara (Jenna Ortega) being stalked and attacked by the infamous masked murderer similar to how Barrymore’s Casey Becker was killed in the first film. Dewey (Arquette), who appears to no longer be sheriff of Woodsboro, phones Sidney (Neve) and tells her “it’s happening” again. The chaos and bloodshed bring the final three survivors back together once more, as they are the only ones who’ve withstood the onslaught of each series of Ghostface’s murder sprees.
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“Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past,” reads the film’s official synopsis from Paramount Pictures. In addition to Campbell, Cox, and Arquette, Roger L. Jackson returns as the voice of Ghostface, and Marley Shelton reprises her role as Judy Hicks from Scream 4. Other newcomers this time around include Jack Quaid, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Dylan Minnette, Mikey Madison, Sonia Ben Ammar, and Kyle Gallner.
There had previously been doubts about Campbell would return for a Scream movie, but in 2020 she revealed that she was open to returning and praises the film’s creative team for their new vision of the franchise. “They’ve come to me, and we’re having conversations,” Campbell said at the time, per Bloody Disgusting. “It’s a little hard at the moment because of COVID to know when that’ll happen, and hopefully, we can see eye to eye on all the elements that have to come into place for it to happen.”
She then went on to explain how she “originally had been really apprehensive about doing another Scream without Wes [Craven],” the late iconic filmmaker who created the franchise “because he was such a genius.” Campbell continued, “He is the reason they are what they are, but the directors have come to me with such a great appreciation for Wes’s work, and they really want to honor it, and that meant a lot to me. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do it.”
The new film is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, of filmmaking group Radio Silence (Ready or Not), and the script was written by James Vanderbilt (Murder Mystery, Zodiac) and Guy Busick (Ready or Not, Castle Rock). The movie was filmed between September to November 2020, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Scream is currently set to be released in theaters on January 14, 2022.
