The cast of Scream 5 had fake scripts so that nobody would know the ending of the film. Wes Craven made waves in the '80s by helping popularize the slasher genre with A Nightmare on Elm Street and introduced the now-iconic villain Freddy Krueger. Craven continued his success into the '90s when he released Scream in 1996. Scream was praised for its meta-horror approach, something that future horror movies would often try to replicate. The film was successful enough to launch a franchise, resulting in three sequels and even a TV series that ran for three seasons. Now, fans are getting another sequel.
After years of rumors that Scream 5 was in development, it was officially confirmed in March that Scream 5 was happening with the directors of Ready or Not, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, helming the project. In the following months, Paramount confirmed that legacy cast members including David Arquette (Dewey Riley), Courtney Cox (Gale Weathers), and Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott) were all returning for the sequel, in addition to new-comers to the series Melissa Barrera, Jack Quaid, Kyle Gallner, and Dylan Minnette. Without any story details to go off of, it's impossible to know who Ghostface will be this time around, and it looks like most of the cast doesn't know either.
In a recent interview with Cinemablend, Scream 5 producer William Sherak revealed that there were several different versions of the script handed out to the cast. Handing out fake scripts to some of the cast ensured that nobody knew who Ghostface would be in the sequel. Sherak's full quote can be read below:
"I think the two things to remember for us. One is there are multiple versions of the draft out there and most of the cast don’t know if they have the right version or not. So we’ve been playing that game with them as well. And the fun of a Scream movie is that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around. So the goal is to keep that going for as long as possible and have fun with it."
Since Craven directed all four of the Scream movies and wrote on the TV series, fans were nervous about getting Scream 5 without the master of horror. In fact, Campbell herself was hesitant to return to the Scream franchise without Craven until she got a letter from the directors who convinced her that they had every intention of honoring Craven's legacy. With three of the big stars from previous Scream films returning, it seems that the cast is confident in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett.
The cast of Scream 5 is being kept in the dark about the ending of the film, but the secret identity of the killer has always been kept tightly under wraps in the franchise. Craven and the writers of the previous films did the same thing with fake scripts so that the killer's identity wouldn't leak to the public. Having fake scripts or filming multiple endings isn't an uncommon technique in Hollywood, as high-profile projects like Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones season 8 took drastic measures to keep plot details a secret. It's possible that some of the main stars like Campbell or Arquette know who Ghostface is in Scream 5 now that filming has wrapped, but either way, having fake scripts seems like an effective way to keep the film's ending a surprise.
Source: Cinemablend
