Wes Craven had secured his status as one of the most important and influential figures in the history of the horror genre long before he passed away in 2015 at the age of 76. In a directorial career spanning almost 40 years, he was responsible for classics like The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and the first four installments of the Scream franchise.
While the majority of his work centered on scaring audiences out of their seats, Craven always seemed capable of putting a fresh spin on familiar tropes whether it be Freddy Krueger haunting his victims in their dreams, the wildly imaginative third Nightmare installment Dream Warriors or the meta seventh entry New Nightmare, and that’s without even mentioning Scream‘s enduring popularity as a post-modern classic of the genre.
Craven might no longer be with us, but the cast and crew of Scream 5 will be hoping that Ghostface’s latest outing will honor his memory. In a recent interview, returning star David Arquette admitted that one of the major reasons he agreed to come back is that the story will actively draw inspiration from and pay homage to the legendary director.
“I talked to the directors and they were huge Wes fans. He’s been a huge inspiration for them their whole career. So, they have their hearts in the right place, they want to do something that he’d be proud of. And then the fact that Courtney’s coming back and hopefully Neve comes back as well, there’s something healing about that, for us to be able to carry on these films that he’s done.”
Neve Campbell might not have been officially confirmed for the cast yet, but all signs make it seem like an inevitability that she’ll be rejoining Arquette and Cox, while directors Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s last movie Ready or Not showed two rising talents that were more than capable of putting a new and inventive twist on the standard archetypes of the horror pic. And hopefully they’ll be able to replicate that success and do Wes Craven justice when cameras start rolling on Scream 5.