Asked what she has coming up, Neve Campbell listed two television shows she is developing, one she has already sold, and Scream 8. Pressed on the last one, she offered exactly one detail: “I can never tell you anything about Scream 8. I’ll be in it.”
She was speaking to the Associated Press at the London launch for the second season of Netflix’s Black Doves. Sidney Prescott is therefore in the eighth Scream film, which Paramount and Spyglass Media Group have in development, and it will be Campbell’s seventh turn as the character.
Sidney Is the Reason She Came Back
Campbell walked away from Scream VI in 2023 after a pay dispute with Paramount, and that film remains the only entry in the series without her. She came back for Scream 7 once Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original, signed on to direct and rebuilt the story around Sidney.
Scream 7 opened in February to $97.2 million worldwide, the largest opening the franchise has had, and finished at roughly $214 million globally against a $45 million budget, the highest total the series has posted. Reviews ran cooler than the receipts. The film moved Sidney to Pine Grove, Indiana, where she lives as Sidney Evans with husband Mark (Joel McHale) and teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), and it brought back Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers and Matthew Lillard as Stu Macher.
The Writers Are Set, the Director Is Not
Poker Face showrunners Lilla and Nora Zuckerman have reportedly been hired to write Scream 8. Williamson is not expected back behind the camera: The Hollywood Reporter has him moving into a producer role, and the director’s chair is still empty. Cox volunteered for it at TIFF in September, saying she thinks she should take the job.
Campbell has played Sidney since Wes Craven’s original in 1996. Paramount has not dated the eighth film.