The debates will continue to rage about which Scream movie is the best, but in our humble opinion Scream 2 is definitely up there. The ultra meta sequel has just celebrated its (gasp) 25th anniversary and Kevin Williamson was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly to celebrate the occasion.
Kevin Williamson ruled the roost in the late 1990s, between writing Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty and the epic teen romance series Dawson’s Creek. Scream 2 had the difficult task of matching up to the great first movie, and had to be written on a time-crunch, with it being released just a year after the first slasher movie.
It managed to up the game, with a brilliant cast that included Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps (who appear in the incredible prologue), as well as Sarah Michelle Gellar, a Joshua Jackson cameo, Timothy Olyphant (as one of the best villains in the franchise), Jerry O’Connell, Portia de Rossi, and a very memorable Laurie Metcalf performance. And Heather Graham, Luke Wilson and Tori Spelling all feature in the movie-within-a-movie Stab.
But Kevin Williamson has one regret about Scream 2 – and that’s killing off fan-favourite character Randy (Jamie Kennedy). “I thought if you kill someone really important to the audience in the middle, it just ups the stakes. Everything’s off the table. I knew we weren’t going to kill Sydney, I knew we weren’t going to kill Gale (Courtney Cox) or Dewey (David Arquette). Those three characters, for Scream 2, were safe, and so I had to look to the secondary characters.”
“I love Randy, I would have given him a much bigger life had I known this franchise was going to live and live. I would have loved for him to be a legacy character. At the time, I thought it would just be the punch in the gut the audience needed at that time, to really get mad, and get mad at the killer.” And we certainly did! Randy’s death was a total gut-punch, and definitely had the shock factor. After that, no one was safe.
It’s been 25 years, but we’re not sure if we’re ready to forgive Williamson yet. Check out our guide to the best horror movies.