10 Movie Casting Choices That Were Total Misdirection

8. Drew Barrymore - Scream

What Everyone Expected

Drew Barrymore was featured extensively in the marketing for Wes Craven's classic horror-satire Scream, being given the most prominent placement on all of the movie's posters, while the trailers implied she had a starring role equivalent to that of her co-stars Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell.

Given that she was by far the most famous member of the cast, it was pretty reasonable to assume that she was at least a major character, if not the final girl herself.

What We Got

In an expectation-shattering twist, Barrymore's Casey Becker appears in the film's very first scene and...that's it.

Casey is Ghostface's first victim in the movie - well, the second if you count her boyfriend - and Barrymore lasts a mere 12 minutes of screen time before making her exit.

Though it might've been a disappointing move for the Barrymore die-hards out there, killing off the film's most note-worthy cast member in the very first scene set a precedent of unpredictability which carried throughout the remainder of the movie.

It threw the old genre rulebook out and told the audience that anyone could die at any moment, while the final girl mantle was instead passed to Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott.