Neve Campbell wanted to bring the Scream franchise back to its roots with the upcoming seventh instalment. The Wild Things actress played Scream's main character, Sidney Prescott, for the first five films of the franchise but walked away from the sixth instalment due to a pay dispute. However, after Scream's original writer, Kevin Williamson, joined the seventh film as director, she decided to make a comeback. Williamson has now revealed that Campbell had plenty of suggestions for Scream 7, including returning to its tonal roots and bringing the horror back to Woodsboro after an outing in New York. "Neve wants to go back to the first one and find the suspense and really concentrate on scary and not bloody," Williamson explained in Ashley Cullins' new book, Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror, according to an extract published by Bloody Disgusting. "She was smart. She goes, 'This is the time to do it because we're moving away from New York. We're going back to Sidney's life. This is the time to reset a little bit. And I'm like, 'Yup, let's do it.'" Scream 7 was originally supposed to be directed by Happy Death Day's Christopher Landon and star Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, who led the fifth and sixth instalments. However, Barrera was fired from the franchise in late 2023 over her social media posts about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Ortega and Landon subsequently quit too. In the new book, Landon explained that he left because the movie he wanted to make fell apart. "There was no movie anymore. The whole script was about her," he said, referring to Barrera's character Sam. "I didn't sign on to make 'a Scream movie.' I signed on to make that movie. When that movie no longer existed, I moved on." Alongside Campbell, Scream 7 features returning stars Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding as well as several franchise newcomers like Anna Camp and Joel McHale. The slasher horror will be released in cinemas in February 2026.