‘Scream VII’ loses director Christopher Landon: “A dream job that turned into a nightmare”

Christopher Landon no longer responds to Cry VII call. The director abandoned the film, capping a tumultuous few months for the embattled project that included the departure of two of its leads.

“I think now is a good time to announce that I formally left Scream 7 weeks ago. This will disappoint some and delight others. It was a dream job that turned into a nightmare. And my heart broke for everyone involved. All. But it’s time to move on,” Landon wrote on Saturday. “I have nothing more to add to the conversation other than that I hope Wes’s legacy thrives and rises above the noise of a divided world. “What he and Kevin created is something amazing and I was honored to have even a brief moment basking in its brilliance.”

On November 21, news broke that Spyglass had fired actress Melissa Barrera from the upcoming seventh film. Shout The film through social media posts characterized her as anti-Semitic, while a day later came news that fellow star Jenna Ortega would not be returning.

Sources note that Barrera’s firing actually occurred in October, in the early weeks of the war between Israel and Hamas, during which the actor had become increasingly vocal. Ortega’s departure, which was a decision made by her and her representation team, came before this summer’s SAG-AFTRA strike, but was not made public until last month.

Landon is the horror specialist behind it. happy death day and Queerand would have assumed the position of director of Radio Silence, which revitalized the franchise with 2022 Shout as well as Scream VIwhich bowed in March and became the horror franchise’s biggest domestic hit and grosser since the 1996 original directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson.

Landon, who was hired before the actors’ strike, expressed his displeasure after Barrera’s firing was announced. “This is my statement: Everything sucks. Stop yelling,” Landon wrote on Tuesday X, before deleting the post. “This was not my decision.”

Now the future of Cry VII is up to James Vanderbilt, the writer and producer who co-wrote the rebooted films and who is writing the current script. Sources say that the scribe, who was already dealing with the loss of Ortega, had been centering the story on Barrera’s character. When they let her go, he at least had a creative partner in Landon to take on the story. Now the franchise is back to zero and will need to be completely rebuilt.