How Scream 4 Should Have Ended (And What Came Next)

1. Scream 5

Now, here’s where the prospects for the rest of the series would have gotten interesting. There could have been two possible routes the next film would have taken: If Sydney did in fact die, then Scream 5 would have picked up a couple years later while Jill is living life as a full-fledged Kim Kardashian-level celebrity when someone else taking on the guise of Ghostface begins killing people around her and taunting her that he or she knows her secret.

Another route Scream 5 could have taken would have been if Sydney did survive, then she might have spent the period between films in a coma and Scream 5 would have dealt with her recovering, maybe having a touch of amnesia. Jill then would have needed to find a new partner to help her finish Sydney off before she recovered her memories of their showdown in Scream 4.

Both of those possible stories for Scream 5 sound like they could have dealt with some deeper issues, such as Jill’s ruthless pursuit of becoming famous, or Sydney dealing with post-traumatic stress and the repressed memory of her cousin nearly killing her. Regardless of which way the film went, it seems that Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were eager to take the Scream saga into new territory.

But let’s posit something else. If this was the planned trajectory for Scream 5 and perhaps Scream 6, that means the role of main protagonist would have shifted from Sydney over to Jill, played by Emma Roberts. Roberts had up until this time appeared mostly in kids TV shows and movies. Scream 4 was supposed to be her breakout role into more adult content. This was still a few years before she teamed up with Ryan Murphy for Scream Queens and before she joined the ensemble of American Horror Story. She hadn’t quite proven her chops yet. Try rewatching Scream 4 and it’s hard not to criticize Roberts’ performance.

Among the other actors, her performance sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when she was totally outshone by Hayden Panettiere’s performance as Kirby, Jill’s best friend. Kirby was this headstrong female character who could go head-to-head with any Ghostface on horror trivia, which would have been pretty much a perfect new protagonist for the series. Sadly, Kirby met her end in the film and it was a shame to see her go.

Jill, by comparison, was largely underwritten and actually more annoying than anything. Roberts didn’t seem to be remotely invested in the role whatsoever. It’s like she didn’t know how to act in a Scream film - just listen to her awful Ghostface impression! In real life, Roberts has even stated in interviews that she had never even seen the original Scream.

So what if after shooting was well underway, Craven and the studio began to have buyer’s remorse? What if they determined Roberts was not capable of carrying the rest of the franchise on her shoulders, and that’s when they ordered the ending be rewritten?

Right now, with Craven’s untimely passing in 2015, and everything that’s happened with the Weinsteins and their production companies, the future of the series is up in the air. Perhaps the only way to bring Ghostface back to the big screen would be if a new writer and director came along and offered a treatment that would undo all of the sequels in the same fashion that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride did with last year’s Halloween.

So what do you think? Let us know which version of Scream 5 you would have liked to have seen and whether you think there is any hope for us getting any more Screams in the coming years.