Scream 7 is in the works, but the iconic horror series is switching hands once again. Due to scheduling conflicts, Radio Silence duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are stepping into executive producer roles while Happy Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon takes the reins. New blood with a slasher history—and a decent one at that—is exciting enough, but Landon is also the first openly gay director to helm a Scream film.
Scream has had queer themes since the beginning, with many critics and fans reading killers Billy Loomis and Stu Macher as repressed lovers, something that literally bleeds out into the open during the final act as the two coddle each other while taunting Sydney Prescott. And it’s not just a fan reading—writer Kevin Williamson, who is also openly gay, based the two on Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb, real-life queer killers.
More recently, one of the Core Four, Mindy Meeks-Martin, had a girlfriend in Scream 6—Anika Kayoko. But she was brutally killed off. It’s a slasher, people are gonna die. And Mindy, like the rest of the Core Four, is still alive and well. But Scream’s history with queer characters is quiet and unspoken. I talked to an old friend about Stu and Billy being all but confirmed as gay and their response was, to put it mildly, disgust. And with no outright confirmation in the first film, there was enough wiggle room for them to deny the romance completely. Safe to say, we’re not close anymore.
Queer representation needs to be louder than implications. If people can deny it, bigots can worm their way in and undermine what little representation there is. And when there is clear representation, it needs to be more than just slasher fodder. Anika barely had any screen time, and the little she did was mostly under suspicion as everyone was thrown under the spotlight as potential killers. Mindy meanwhile got stabbed and left out for the entire final act. Unfortunately, that’s nothing new for the series. Back in Scream 4, Robbie Mercer claims to be gay to try and stop Ghostface from killing him, but to subvert 21st-century slasher rules, Ghostface kills him anyway—even the gays aren’t safe.
It puts queer people on a level playing field and treats them equally, which in theory is a great idea. But the slasher genre has always been queer-coded, rarely stepping outside the bounds of suggestion into something more tangible. Revealing a queer character might be queer right before their death, which might itself just be a tactic to survive, and killing off a gay character with very little screen time, are not ‘subverting expectations’, they’re burying what little gay rep we have. Adding fuel to the fire is the original concept for Scream 5, which saw Amber Freeman and Tara Carpenter as girlfriends. This was scrapped, and it’s unclear if Tara is still queer or if that was also thrown out—she might be bi given her relationship with Chad Meeks-Martin, but we don’t know. That’s the problem.
An openly queer final girl kicking ass in Scream would be a huge win for representation. Final girls have long subverted sexist expectations by murdering their abusers and stalkers and showing that fucking with women is a terrible idea, but we’ve yet to see that happen for the LGBTQ+ community in a flagship horror franchise like this. An openly gay director might finally be the ticket to change that.
Landon tends to co-write his scripts, meaning he’ll have a lot of creative control over the direction of Scream 7. Under his guidance, we might see Tara come out of the closet, Mindy with a larger role and maybe a girlfriend that doesn’t die, openly queer killers, or a new LGBTQ+ character that gets more than ten minutes of screen time. Baby steps. That’s not even mentioning the lack of trans and non-binary rep. Scream was ahead of the curve once with Billy and Stu, but it has since fallen behind, despite its earnest attempts to have meaningful representation.
We don’t know who is writing the script yet, given that the strikes are still ongoing. I’m hoping Williamson returns, not only making this the first Scream to be helmed by a gay director, but the first to be helmed by both a gay director and a gay writer. Together, they’d be unstoppable. Throw out subtlety and coding and just give us queer characters who are unashamedly queer, fighting another masked asshole who still makes phone calls in 2023. That alone is a red flag.
Either way, Williamson or no, I hope Landon doesn’t get lost in the buzz of continuing a legacy slasher and finds room to finally bring some meaningful gay representation to the series. If anyone’s gonna do it, Landon is the perfect pick.