In 1996, Scream revived the teen horror movie, a genre that had been dead for nearly a decade, and raked in $174.8 million worldwide. A year later, Scream 2 did equal business and ignited a knockoff explosion that will be remembered forever in the movie industry as the "I Still Know What Disturbing Behavior You and the Bride of Chucky Tingle Did With Your Idle Hands Last Summer" era. As it took off, Scream launched the career of screenwriter Kevin Williamson, freed director Wes Craven from the bowels of movie horror (the 60-year-old Nightmare on Elm Street creator used the clout he won from the success of the Scream films to direct last year's Music of the Heart), and jacked up the hip quotient for a generation of bloodthirsty young actors--Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Liev Schreiber, Jada Pinkett, and Rebecca Gayheart. Not to mention Cox and David Arquette, who met while working on Scream, got engaged after Scream 2, and were married by Scream 3.

So why not leave well enough alone and ditch the Scream machine before that nasty ghost-masked Ginsu freak comes crawling back a third time? "Resolution," says Craven. "We always knew we'd need a third and final act to wrap up all the loose ends. Three is where the whole story has always been heading. Three is where we find out what happens to everybody." Miramax cochair Bob Weinstein adds, "We're going out in high style, I promise that. The people who've seen Scream 3 are saying it's scarier, funnier, and far more surprising than the last two. It's an amazing end of an amazing ride."

It's certainly been an amazing ride for Miramax. Scream, a scary movie that made merry with unexpectedly hip, pop-culture-savvy references to the cliches and excesses of its slash-happy Hollywood predecessors, has become a dead-serious franchise for Miramax's Dimension Films division. "It's weird," says David Arquette, who plays Scream's dopey deputy, Dewey Riley. "In a way, we've kind of become the sort of movie we're spoofing. We became an institution, we became a part of the horror-movie tradition."

Scream, conceived from the beginning as a trilogy when Williamson hammered out his original script and outlines for two sequels in just three days, is all screamed out. "It definitely feels like it's time for it to be over," Craven admits. "Having done it in a unique three-picture way, we can now say we've been there and done that." Adds Weinstein, "This is it. We knew we weren't keeping the door open for a Scream 4 or Scream 5."

It was tough enough keeping the door open for Scream 3. For one thing, the film's actors, especially Campbell and Cox Arquette, had become major stars in the years since the original Scream, and it wasn't clear whether they would return to a genre they appeared to have outgrown. "My life is 100 percent more complicated than it was during the original," says Cox Arquette, whose contract on NBC's Friends is up this year. "Now, any decision I make when it comes to a new project tends to be very stressful." Adds Campbell, "Doing number three was a very tough decision. Bob made a call to [convince] me. Wes made a call. I was worried it wouldn't be the same group of people involved."

Campbell had every reason to worry. Although she signed on to the movie with the best intentions--"I really wanted to do this final Scream to bring a sense of closure to the character"--she and her costars, who agreed to do the movie without seeing a script, soon learned that Williamson would not be writing the third installment.


By all accounts, Williamson had overextended himself. After being anointed Miramax's golden boy, he was apparently given carte blanche to write or produce anything he wanted. His early script for Teaching Mrs. Tingle was rescued from turnaround, he sold his scripts for I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Faculty, executive-produced Halloween: H20, created the popular WB television series Dawson's Creek, and created and oversaw this season's now-canceled ABC series, Wasteland. Williamson was juggling nearly a half-dozen projects when it came time to do Scream 3. "I had too much going on," he says. "It was a very, very difficult decision, but I knew Scream was in capable hands and I just would have held it back." Weinstein says the decision was made amicably. "Miramax loves Kevin and we expect a lot of great things from him," he says, "but nobody with that much work could fit a whole other movie into their schedule." Miramax considered waiting for Williamson, but, says Craven, "It was either delay for a whole other year or go with somebody else. I personally wanted to finish the 20th century with this particular line of stories wrapped up."