Preview of our full interview
This writer had the opportunity last night to speak one-on-one with Wes Craven about the upcoming Scream 4, opening on April 15. And as a preview to our full interview to come, I thought I’d pull some bites that might interest you now.
A lot of talk surrounding the film concerns Kevin Williamson’s involvement. Why did he bow out? How much did he write? How much did Ehren Kruger – who receives an executive producer credit on this entry – write? Craven told me, “I talked to Kevin last night. I think he was trying to figure out what to say about the film to the press because there are rumors that something horrible has happened. He has not seen the movie. He’s been completely immersed in Vampire Diaries. That was part of the reason he stopped being a writer on the film, but he did have a complete script. He had everything laid out for us. When Ehren Kruger came in, it was because Kevin had to contractually put his efforts into Vampire Diaries. Ehren did some great secondary work and some additional scenes that needed fleshing out. And I did some writing, too, but this was Kevin’s baby.”
Craven was thankful he didn’t have the same experience he had on Scream 3, an entry that was mired in rewrites and, in some instances, writing scenes on the day they were supposed to be shot. Here, they had too much script.
“The script was never bound to a lean and mean page count. It was always high,” Crave said. “We shot a script that was a 138 pages or something like that, so we had a lot of scenes that had to go on the cutting room floor. Some were kind of redundant. Sometimes we were pointing too much at a character as a red herring. There are seven or eight scenes that will be on the DVD. All the really good stuff was in the final film.”
Craven said he was open to a fifth chapter. He’s intrigued by the notion of doing a “second trilogy” in a franchise he directed. But it really is a question of quality and whether or not he wants to commit more of his creativity to the series. But, he’s open to the idea and if the script is solid, he’ll consider it.
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor
