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Scream 5 Unlikely to Happen Without Wes Craven as Director
Scream franchise star Neve Campbell isn't hoping out much hope for a fifth film, now that legendary horror director Wes Craven has passed away. In the annals of horror history, few directors have managed to influence the genre to the degree Craven did. Craven also stayed a prominent horror figure for multiple decades, first terrifying audiences in the 70s with grindhouse chillers The Last House on The Left and The Hills Have Eyes, before reviving the already beginning to wane 80s slasher movement with 1984's fiercely creative A Nightmare on Elm Street.
While inventing iconic horror boogeyman Freddy Krueger might ultimately go down as Craven's greatest genre achievement, arguably right up there with Springwood's dream demon in notoriety is the director's work on the Scream franchise. The slasher subgenre was all but completely dead by 1996, and Scream was exactly what it needed to rise from the grave. Presenting a fresh take on all the old slasher tropes - while also making fun of them - Scream provided a twisty murder mystery that audiences ate up in droves.
As with many horror franchises, sequels Scream 2, Scream 3, and Scream 4 never managed to hit the heights of the original, but unlike most franchises, Craven returned to direct each and every installment. This lent the series a consistent tone and style, and prevented the franchise from ever hitting the low points of ridiculous slasher sequels like Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. So, will fans ever get a Scream 5? While out promoting new action flick Skyscraper, Neve "Sidney Prescott" Campbell was asked to weigh in on that very subject by Kinowetter, and replied that she doubts another sequel will ever happen, due to the fact that Craven is no longer among the living.
Craven passed away on August 30, 2015, at the age of 76, after a battle with brain cancer. He continued working right up until the end, having several projects in development at the time of his death. Jill Blotevogel - showrunner for season 1 of MTV's Scream TV series - even remarked after Craven's passing that the writer/director had given her notes on the pilot, which aired just a couple months prior to his death. Craven clearly continued to care about Scream long after Scream 4 released in 2011, and as Campbell remarked in the interview cited above, was seen as the primary driving force behind the film franchise.
In theory, the story of surviving characters Sidney, Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dwight "Dewey" Riley (David Arquette) doesn't necessarily require Craven's input to continue, as unlike with many of the director's other films, he didn't pen the scripts for the Scream series. Kevin Williamson wrote Screams 1, 2, and 4, while Ehren Kruger stepped in to write 3. Still, with how creatively instrumental Craven indeed was to the franchise, it's quite likely that Williamson, Campbell, Cox, and Arquette simply have no desire to try and make another entry without their guiding light in tow. That said, it may just be a matter of time until Hollywood decides to make a theatrical reboot of the property without them.
