Massive Original 'Scream 7' That Didn’t Come To Fruition

“Scream 7” made its way to theaters on Feb. 27, 2026, and stars Neve Campbell as legacy character Sidney Prescott, who’s living in Pine Grove, Indiana, with her husband Mark Evans (Joel McHale) and three children, including teen daughter Tatum (Isabel May). The film is drastically different from “Scream” and “Scream VI,” which introduced sisters Sara and Tam Carpenter, played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, respectively.

What Happened to Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in “Scream 7?”

Even with the return of some legacy characters, for many fans, the bigger story wasn’t what was on screen. It was what wasn’t. Sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter — played by Barrera and Ortega — are nowhere to be found. The behind-the-scenes fallout that led to their absences reshaped “Scream 7” entirely, and the original plan for the film was something far darker than what audiences saw.

Barrera’s departure came first. In November 2023, Spyglass Media fired her following social media posts she made about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The studio issued a statement, obtained by MovieWeb, that read: “Spyglass’s stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form.” Shortly after she was fired, Barrera responded publicly in a statement that was obtained by MovieWeb.

Barrera said, in her public statement, also obtained by MovieWeb, “First and foremost, I condemn Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” and added that she would “continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me.” Ortega’s exit followed shortly after.

The studio’s official line was scheduling conflicts with her hit Netflix series “Wednesday,” but that explanation was met with skepticism. In April 2025, Ortega spoke directly about her decision in an interview with The Cut, in her reasoning for leaving was obtained by News Nation, she said, “The Melissa stuff was happening, and it was all kind of falling apart, if “Scream 7” wasn’t going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”

The directors she referenced — Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, who helmed both “Scream” (2022) and “Scream VI” — also left the project. “Happy Death Day” and “Drop” director Christopher Landon was brought in as their replacement, but he exited in December 2023 as well. Landon later revealed that he received death threats from fans who wrongly believed he was responsible for Barrera’s firing.

The Original “Scream 7” Story That Never Got Made

What would “Scream 7” have looked like with Barrera and Ortega still attached? According to the people who were building it, it was significantly different and considerably darker. Actor Skeet Ulrich, who played Billy Loomis in the original “Scream” and appeared in de-aged flashback scenes in the later films, confirmed the overarching plan in a December 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Ulrich said he was not returning for “Scream 7,” and explained: “When we talked about coming back for 5, it was a three-picture arc for Billy Loomis to slowly turn his daughter into the killer.” Sam Carpenter becoming Ghostface was a theory many fans had already pieced together from the fifth and sixth films, where her connection to her father’s violent legacy was a recurring thread.

The de-aged Billy Loomis sequences now read as setup for a payoff that never came. Apparently, the original plan was that Tara would have died in “Scream 7,” leading to Billy eventually turning Sam into Ghostface, though the accuracy of that detail remains unconfirmed. The gap between what the film was and what it was planned to be is hard to ignore.

A story about Sam Carpenter slowly becoming the thing she feared most, with Tara’s alleged death leading to a darker arc for Sam, would have been a genuinely bold direction for the series. Instead, audiences got a fifth outing for Sidney Prescott — a character whose story has already been told, thoroughly, across four previous films. The Carpenter sisters were a great addition to the franchise, and it would have been intriguing to see Sam take a what-could-have-been a darker turn for her character arc.