There is a contingent of “Scream” fans who have begun to declare that “Scream 2,” also directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, is better than the original. “Scream 2” certainly turned out better than a hastily constructed sequel had any right to be, but let’s not go nuts, eh fellas?
“Scream 2” continued the horror meta-commentary laid down by the first film, and the characters, recognizing that a rash of killings has once again begun, realize they might be in a sequel. And sequels, of course, follow their own set of rules. Also, in true sequel fashion, “Scream 2” required an ending that at least matched the famed it-was-actually-two-killers-all-along twist ending of the original. Williamson revealed in the IndieWire interview that one of the potential killers would have been a familiar face … but only in a fake script that was never going to be filmed. The dummy was written deliberately to throw off any pirates and script thieves. He said:
“We were sending the script out without the last 75 pages to do our best, but we knew it would come out. So my team wrote a dummy script, my assistant wrote it, and we had a fake script with Dewey as the killer, and we leaked the fake one. […] So by the time the real one got out there, there was no fuss, no one cared.”
Dewey, of course, was the goofy former sheriff played by David Arquette. In “Scream 2,” Dewey had survived an injury and was now a little more off-balance than he had been. It would have been quite a twist. Only it was never going to be.