9 Genuinely Subtle Ways Movies Planned For The Sequel In Advance
1. The Cotton Weary Subplot - Scream
Wes Craven's Scream is one of the smartest horror films ever made, a devilishly self-aware lampoon of the tired slasher subgenre, albeit one that also came baked-in with set-ups for a potential sequel.
The most crucial yet also the most subtle set-up was the introduction of the character Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), who was sent to jail for the rape and murder of protagonist Sidney's (Neve Campbell) mother Maureen.
Cotton appears for literally seconds in the first movie as part of a news clip, yet his presence is ultimately vital in setting up a major through-line of Scream 2.
The original Scream ends with Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) confessing to Maureen's murder, and in Scream 2, Cotton is released from prison, with some understandable unease on Sidney's part.
Despite several fake-outs suggesting that Cotton might be the new Ghostface, he ends up saving Sidney from one of the real killers, Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf), and finally makes peace with Sid at the end of the film. Before dying at the start of Scream 3, anyway.
But screenwriter Kevin Williamson didn't simply write the original Scream as a one-off: he was desperate enough to sell the script, then called "Scary Movie," that he attached five-page treatments for the second and third movies.
Furthermore, by the time Scream had gone into production, Williamson had already written large portions of Scream 2, allowing it to be released less than a year after the original. This included a sizable part for Cotton, who Williamson was actually considering to be the film's killer early in production - among other prospects.
Even more persuasive than that, however, is the fact that Schreiber was paid a sizeable $20,000 for his seconds-long Scream cameo shot in a single day, which no sane producer would ever do unless they had concrete plans to bring them back for a marquee role in the sequel.
Given that Schreiber's performance was one of Scream 2's bright spots and his arc throughout the movie proved extremely satisfying, locking him down so aggressively for the first film was clearly a smart call.