Scream 2 at 25: Kevin Williamson remembers his second stab at screenwriting the iconic series

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for Scream 2.

Screenwriters don't get hotter than Kevin Williamson was during the late '90s. In quick succession, Williamson wrote the horror hits Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, rewrote the screenplay for the sci-fi-horror film The Faculty, and successfully launched the TV show Dawson's Creek. No wonder he took a nap while visiting the set of Scream 2 (which he also wrote).

"I was writing the script on the set," says Williamson of the Wes Craven-directed, Neve Campbell-starring sequel, released 25 years ago on Dec. 12, 1997. "I was flying back from Dawson's Creek season 1, I was in the middle of The Faculty, and a lot was going on. The other day, I was looking at these pictures, there's a picture of David Arquette passed out on the grass, and me passed out on the grass."

Paramount Neve Campbell in 'Scream 2'

Below, the writer talks about making Scream 2, which character he wishes he hadn't killed, and his favorite scary movies of the last 25 years.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Scream was not an immediate hit when Dimension released the film in 1996. After that first weekend, did you think, well, there probably won't be a second one?

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: There was always conversation about it during the filming of the first one. I remember when I was on the set, they were playing this game: Why don't we hire Kevin to write a sequel, just in case. They were already talking, like, a three-picture deal. They had given me a draft of The Faculty that they wanted me to rewrite, and they were talking an overall deal, and I was like, okay, what do I do? And then the agents got involved, and they were like, no, you can't write anything, let's wait until you know the success of [Scream]. And then, of course, it came out to low numbers. But we had gotten a couple of good notices, and they started just papering those reviews out, and the press kind of went: Oh, what's going on over here? And then, by the second or third week, our box office was building. When was the last time box office built? Word of mouth was so strong on the film that they instantly were like, Okay, start writing the sequel.

How quickly did you write the script? Because in the end, Scream 2 was in theaters less than twelve months later.

Well, when I sold the first Scream, I had a treatment [for the second]. I had the whole Sydney-goes-to-college. A lot of it changed along the way but it pretty much stayed intact. Yeah, I wrote really fast. I was down in North Carolina, working on Dawson's Creek, and I remember just sitting here, just panicked and frantic, trying to write Scream 2.

Is it true that you had to rewrite the script after 40 pages of the original screenplay leaked to the internet, or was that just a story for publicity?

Here's how I remember it. There are so many different versions of this story, and it's so funny, because I get asked this question a lot. Here's what happened: I knew the script was going to get leaked, because everyone was talking about it, there was press, press, press: What's going to happen in Scream 2? Luckily we had caught the zeitgeist and everyone wanted to know about Scream 2. So I knew it was going it leak eventually — there was no way we could hold onto it. We were sending the script out without the last 75 pages to do our best, but we knew it would come out. So my team wrote a dummy script, my assistant wrote it, and we had a fake script with Dewey as the killer, and we leaked the fake one. So by the time the real one got out there, there was no fuss, no one cared.

Paramount 'Scream 2'

Where did the idea for Stab, the movie-within-the-movie, come from?

I knew I wanted to do total-meta. I wanted to have a film version from the opening scene [of the original Scream] onscreen while we were watching someone else get killed. I thought Wes did that so beautifully. I loved he way he filmed Stab 1 and I thought it worked really great. It was just what I wanted in that scene, and then it became the whole spine of Scream 2, which is that Stab has come out, and created a copycat killer, and has put all the attention right back on Sydney, and all she wants to do is disappear. I thought it was a great conflict for this character.

At the end of the first Scream, the film nods to the idea that maybe Neve Campbell's Sydney and Jamie Kennedy's Randy are going to get together. Did you think about pursuing that in Scream 2?

No, I thought it should just always be his crush. He was always sort of the guy who had the crush and they were meant to be friends always. I think Neve and Jamie both asked that question to Wes, and Wes pointed to me, and I was like, "Nah." Yes, he would love it, he also knows that's not going to happen, and she knows it's not going to happen, but they have that sort of flirty thing. He flirts with her and she just puts up with it. They're bonded after the first movie. I think they're family at that point.

Randy adds so much to the first two films' meta nature. Was it a hard decision to kill him off?

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 or Dewey. 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.

Gilbert Flores/Getty 'Scream' and 'Scream 2' screenwriter Kevin Williamson

What's your favorite scary movie of the last 25 years?

Oh, my gosh, I have so many. I love James Wan, and what he directs, and I do think The Conjuring was just a wonderful film. The Babadook was awesome, because I thought it blended emotion, theme, allegory, all in one, and also kept me f---ing scared. That's a good question. You've caught me off-guard. If you'd asked me what the best-written screenplay was, I would say Get Out. I think we'll be talking about that movie 25 years from now. I think we'll be talking about that movie 50 years from now.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have a TV show on Peacock called Dead Day, which is a fun genre piece. It's about: One day a year, the dead can rise. And I'm getting ready to direct a movie in the coming year. It's a thriller, and it doesn't necessarily fall into the horror genre, but there are a lot of set pieces and scares. It's called The Audition. It's about a young actress who auditions for a part and it all goes wrong. So it's a fun thriller. It's sort of, how would you describe it…

Give me the elevator pitch.

I don't know what the elevator pitch is! Anyway, it's a spec script I wrote, and I set it up. and we're casting now.

A newly remastered 4K version of Scream 2 is available to buy on Digital and in a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray set that includes legacy bonus content, as well as access to a Digital copy of the film.

Paramount 'Scream 2'

Pick up a copy of Entertainment Weekly's Ultimate Guide to Scream, available online.

Related content:

• Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson encouraged directors of new sequel to take 'big swings'

• Neve Campbell was 'apprehensive' about making Scream 5 after passing of Wes Craven

• Neve Campbell recalls filming Scream: 'None of us thought it would be huge'