Neve Campbell Reveals Details About Her Return For 'Scream VII'

Final Girls are an important aspect of horror films. They give us a hero to root for. Through them, there is hope that someone can escape the madness they face. They survive and, if the movie is successful (or doesn’t throw in a sudden deadly twist before the credits roll) they go on to be haunted again and again by the events they survived. The trauma inflicted upon them keeps getting worse and worse, movie after movie, and audiences keep coming back for more.

That is the case with the Scream films. Released in 1996, Scream took on slasher movies with a slick wit and some meta jokes. It took moviegoers by storm, earning an enormous box office, producing five (soon to be six) sequels, and cementing Neve Campbell’s rise into movie superstardom. Campbell starred in almost every entry in the franchise as Sidney Prescott. She stepped away when she felt she was not being offered a significant sum for Scream VI. “I did not feel that what I was being offered equated to the value that I bring to this franchise, and have brought to this franchise, for 25 years,” she told PEOPLE in 2022.

The franchise introduced new lead characters played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in the fifth Scream film, but Campbell also made an extended appearance. When she stepped away, producers (kind of) shifted the focus away from the past and onto the new leads. It was all but assured that there would be a seventh installment starring Ortega and Barrera. However, Barrera was fired by the studio for making social media posts that supported Palestine.

Ortega would then drop out of the seventh film. Soon after, it would lose its director. The movie looked like it was no more, until a surprise announcement. The original series writer, Kevin Williamson, will return to direct the seventh entry of the film and Campbell will return as Sidney. Campbell explained to Entertainment Tonight that she returned because the attention would return fully to her character. “We are going to follow Sidney,” Campbell explained. “They did pitch the concept to me, and it’s the reason that I jumped on board.”

Williamson told Deadline last year that the Scream producers should pay Campbell whatever she wants. It looks like he got involved to make good on that suggestion. Now, Campbell will be returning and she seems pretty excited. “I love these movies, they are so much fun to be a part of, I’m so grateful for them, I could never have imagined being a part of a movie that would have lasted this many decades,” Campbell told Entertainment Tonight. One of the ultimate Final Girls has returned.