Directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Radio Silence) have shared that their 2022 work Scream (Scream 5), the fifth film in the iconic horror slasher Scream franchise, underwent studio-proposed changes and edits.

“There were two cuts of that movie. There was the one that exists, and everyone has seen, then there was another cut where the first half was totally different,” Bettinelli-Olpin shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “It was just a very shortened version of the first half of the movie, and that was the studio cut at the end of the day.”

Gillet added expansion with: “What they valued about the movie was very different from what we valued about the movie at the end of the day.”

Bettinelli-Olpin then addressed this as something “that [kept] coming up for us”.

“The things that we love the most in anything we make are usually the things that have the biggest target on them in the edit to cut,” he added. “They’re the things that are a little off-kilter and offbeat.”

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Scream 5 was released 11 years after Scream 4, expanding the massacre of a new Ghostface killer following a growing line of copycat killers inspired by Billy Loomis and Stu Macher in the original 1996 classic and genre-reviver. The sequel, written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, starred franchise newcomers Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, and Jack Quaid, who team up with original (legacy) stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Marley Shelton. It followed iconic Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Campbell) in her battle against the knife-wielding masked killer for a fifth time.

“The nutshell version is we tested both of them, and because the second half was the same in each one, they both tested extremely similar,” Bettinelli-Olpin addressed. “But when you went into the details of it — and more than anything, when you watched the reactions — people who saw the cut that exists had a great time.”

The sequel grossed a box office earnings of  $138 million from an original $24 million budget and was hailed by critics as the strongest installment due to performances and a great tribute to the original creator, horror maestro Wes Craven. It was then followed by two sequels, Scream 6 by Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett in 2023 and then last month’s Scream 7 by original screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

The duo concluded: “It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose. So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple of weeks.”

The director’s new film, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, opens in cinemas on March 20th.

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