Courtney Cox in talks to distract you from how damn messy Scream 7 has been

Thanks to Neve Campbell bowing out of Scream VI over a pay dispute, and David Arquette bowing out of the franchise as a whole due to, uh, the events of 2022's Scream, Courtney Cox is now the only live-action performer to have appeared in every single Scream film. (Roger L. Jackson, who voices the Ghostface “identity” in every movie, has her beat out, though, having appeared in the Scream TV series, too.) Cox is now in talks to continue that streak, with Variety reporting that the franchise star is in negotiations to reunite with Campbell in the upcoming Scream 7.

Which is, of course, an infamously messy movie at this point, having lost its two stars, Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, to accusations of hate speech and an alleged pay dispute, and its originally planned directors, Scream and Scream VI team Radio Silence, and its new director, Christopher Landon, who called the whole thing a “nightmare” before leaving the project. Producers Spyglass have, in other words, divested themselves of everything that made the 2020s Scream revival a success except for the name, Campbell, and now, potentially, Cox.

(Our conspiracy brains can’t help but see the above departures, almost all of which were in Spyglass’ control to one extent or another, as a concerted effort to get rid of everyone seriously involved with Scream and Scream VI. But we can’t figure out why you’d want to do that, given that both movies did a horror movie’s basic job at the box office, i.e., more than quadrupling a pair of fairly miniscule budgets.)

Anyway, Cox is now wading into this particular mire, apparently entertaining offers to reprise her role as newswoman/author/improbable-number-of-murders-survivor Gale Weathers. The film is set to be directed by original Scream writer and franchise producer Kevin Williamson, in what’ll only be his second-ever directed film—big news for any fans of 1999's Teaching Mrs. Tingle.