Melissa Barrera’s Scream 7 Comments! Is She Right? Overreacting?

Earlier this year, Scream 7 came out and made a ton of money at the box office. It had the biggest opening for the franchise and later went on to become the highest grossing movie of the franchise. The star of Scream (2022) and Scream VI, Melissa Barrera had some comments on this and she did not hold back. Is she right? Is she wrong? Let’s talk about it!

The Backstory: Before we get into Melissa’s comments, it’s important to talk about the backstory of the Scream franchise and Melissa Barrera’s involvement. Melissa Barrera was hired as the new lead of the franchise for Scream (2022) which acted as a legacy sequel that brought back the old cast with the new cast. That continued into Scream VI where she and Jenna Ortega were the new leads of this franchise. But, Barrera had some comments about the Palestine situation on Twitter that were very quickly deleted by Paramount and she was later fired from the Scream franchise. Because of this, the production of Scream 7 was very rocky and uneven and in a desperation move they brought back Neve Campbell as a way to rebuild trust with the fans and deliver something they wanted. Ever since Barrera was fired, there’s been all sorts of protests from Scream voicing their frustrations about this whole situation. Many people are siding with Barrera on what happened, and maybe Jenna Ortega is one of those people. That’s the backstory with all of this that has led to Melissa’s recent comments.

My Thoughts

In the Variety interview, Barrera made several comments about Scream VII talking about multiple different aspects of the film.

Scream 7’s Box Office Was Fake: This was the point that she made that got the most headlines about the whole situation and this interview. Here’s Barrera’s exact quote from the interview, “...and I think they lied about the numbers. I don’t think it made that much money. But at the stage door, I sign “Scream” things every night. People who love me from those movies are coming to see the show, and they can’t even take that away from me.” I find these quotes about her believing that the studio faked Scream 7’s box office numbers to be so stupid and ridiculous. The quotes come across as jealous that the movie that was the highest grossing came out after she was fired. Both of her Scream movies did solid numbers at the box office, but Scream 7 easily became the highest grossing film of the franchise. To think that the studio lied about the numbers is stupid to me, and so obviously wrong. No studio head or producer is going to call the box office people and go “hey, raise the box office numbers for Scream 7 by $50 million.” That’s not going to happen and that’s not how it works. I saw Scream 7 at a fan screening the Thursday before it opened and we all got posters and everything. It was a 300 person theater, and it was basically sold out. People were excited for this movie and were excited about seeing a new Scream movie. I started working at a movie theater the weekend after Scream VII came out, so it's the second weekend. While that film had a massive second weekend drop off, we still had a lot of people buying tickets and excited for the movie. It’s not remotely surprising to me that Scream 7 is the highest grossing movie of the franchise, because it was a nostalgia bait move. They brought back Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Matthew Lillard, and so many more because the firing of Melissa tarnished the reputation of the franchise and they did a desperate hail mary with bringing back everybody, including Kevin Williamson as the director. Nostalgia sell tickets, it worked for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Scream 7, and it’s going to work for Avengers: Doomsday that’s going to clear $1 billion pretty easily. Melissa might not like the fact that nostalgia sells, but it does. I think another reason why the film had a massive opening was because of the controversy and Melissa fired. There were people very curious about what Scream 7 based on all of the controversy and people protesting outside of the premiere. When there’s that much noise and that much controversy surrounding a film that doesn’t normally have controversy and backlash surrounding it.

The Movie Was Marketed for Nostalgia: Another point she made in all of this was saying that Scream 7 was marketed purely on nostalgia and nothing else. This kind of goes back to what I just talked about of nostalgia does sell tickets. When you’re in the place that the Scream franchise was at post-Scream VI pre-Scream 7, you needed a little bit of a hail mary to have something work to regain trust with the fans. A way to do that is to market your film based on nostalgia and the returning cast members you have. You put Neve Campbell’s face in the marketing and on the posters, you get a lot of people excited. You say that Matthew Lillard is returning as Stu, you get a lot of people excited. Desperate? Absolutely. But it’s the desperation that works to sell tickets. This is kind of the one part of the interview in which she’s right. For better or for worse, Scream 7 was marketed based on nostalgia. But I think the movie kind of had to be given where the Scream franchise was at.

Scream (2022) and Scream VI Returning for Scream 7: So, the last part she said I think is another very stupid thing to say, but basically she expressed her frustrations with Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding returning to Scream 7 despite both of them supporting her decision to leave. I find this to be another excuse that she’s butthurt about what happened and is poking finger at anybody that she can. Brown and Gooding are up and coming actors, they got offered a job and they took it. They’re trying to build their careers and putting them in Scream movies, the biggest horror franchise currently is a great way to get your name out there. Beyond that, I don’t take Brown and Gooding returning as any sort of knock on Melissa. There’s a few very weird and odd people in Hollywood, that if people were to take or not take jobs based on the weird things people said, a lot of people aren’t going to have jobs in Hollywood.