Scream 2 Original Script __hot__
Here’s a draft for a blog post titled:
“What the Original Scream 2 Script Reveals About the Movie That Could Have Been”
If you think you know Scream 2, think again. Before the 1997 sequel became a meta slasher classic in its own right, an entirely different version of the script leaked online — forcing Kevin Williamson to scrap months of work and rewrite the film on a brutal deadline. The result? A completely different killer, a different opening kill, and a darker ending that would have changed the franchise forever.
Here’s what the original Scream 2 script got right — and why we’ll never see it on screen.
The Original Plot: A Darker, Meaner Sequel
Kevin Williamson’s original script, often referred to as the "Draft from May 1997," was significantly different in tone, kills, and motive. While the released film focuses on revenge for Billy Loomis, the original script was a vicious satire of trial-of-the-century media circuses and the fetishization of serial killers.
The Setting: The script largely took place on the campus of "Windsor College" (renamed from "Windsor" to "Windsor" in the final, but the vibe shifted). However, the student body and background characters were more aggressively cynical. There were protests, "I Heart Billy Loomis" t-shirts, and a palpable sense that fame had trumped morality. scream 2 original script
The Opening Kill: The released Scream 2 opens with Phil and Maureen getting stabbed in a crowded theater—a brilliant commentary on audience complacency. The original opening was far more brutal and personal. It featured a different female student named Cici (not the Sorority sister played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) who is stalked in a video store. The killer taunts her by renting Heathers and The Howling, before a gruesome chase through aisles of horror VHS. This scene was cut due to budget and location issues, later reconfigured into the sorority house call.
2. The Killer Reveal: Hallie and Derek?
Yes, you read that right. In the original script, Sidney’s boyfriend Derek and her best friend Hallie were the Ghostface killers. Not Mrs. Loomis. Not Mickey.
The motive? Derek was supposedly the son of a man Billy Loomis’s mother had an affair with (complicated, I know), and Hallie was jealous of Sidney’s fame after the first Woodsboro murders. The duo planned to frame Cotton Weary and become celebrities in the process.
Why it’s shocking: Hallie was one of the few genuinely loyal, kind characters in Sidney’s life. Having her be a killer would have been devastating — and arguably more emotionally brutal than Mrs. Loomis’s revenge plot.
1. The Opening Kill (Drew Barrymore’s Return)
The most famous leaked detail is the opening scene. In the original script, the first victim was not a random student named Maureen (Jada Pinkett Smith). It was Cici Cooper, played by... Drew Barrymore. That’s right. Williamson wanted to pull a masterstroke of meta-casting. Since Barrymore was famously killed in the opening of Scream (despite being the biggest star on the poster), the original Scream 2 script would have brought her back as a different character, a friend of Sidney’s, only to kill her again in the opening scene. The gag would have been on the audience who thought she was safe the second time. Ultimately, Barrymore declined due to scheduling, and the role was rewritten for Sarah Michelle Gellar (who plays Cici in the final film, though in a different scene). Here’s a draft for a blog post titled:
Why Was It Changed? More Than Just the Leak
While the leak was the immediate catalyst, there were other reasons Williamson and Craven pivoted.
1. The "Cotton Weary" Problem: Liev Schreiber was not a superstar yet. Could he carry the villain role with the necessary charisma? The studio worried that a male villain without a personal connection to Billy Loomis felt like a step backward. Mrs. Loomis gave the sequel a direct, emotional artery to the first film.
2. The Hallie Betrayal Was Too Much: Test readers (and Craven himself) felt that making Hallie a killer was too cynical. Scream is dark, but it has a heart. The relationship between Sidney and Hallie was the only pure friendship Sidney had. To destroy that—to make her best friend a traitor—would have broken the character beyond repair for Scream 3. Craven famously protected Sidney’s psychological arc, and Hallie’s betrayal would have turned Sidney into a permanently paranoid recluse, ending the franchise’s hopeful undercurrent.
3. The Meta-Comedy Was Lost: The final film’s killer is a disgruntled mother. There is a dark, almost Greek tragedy comedy to a middle-aged woman pretending to be a reporter just to kill college kids. The original Cotton/Hallie duo was too "serious thriller," not enough "scream."
4. Why Did It Change?
The leak is the short answer. In early 1997, a draft of the Scream 2 script appeared online — a first for a major studio sequel. Williamson and director Wes Craven panicked. They knew fans would already know the killers before release. The Original Plot: A Darker, Meaner Sequel Kevin
So Williamson locked himself in a hotel room and rewrote the entire third act in under a week. Mrs. Loomis (Billy’s mother) became the mastermind, and Mickey became the unhinged film student sidekick. The theater climax stayed, but the who and why changed completely.
The irony: The leak forced them to write a better movie. Most fans now consider Mrs. Loomis one of the best Ghostface reveals — and Laurie Metcalf’s performance is unforgettable.
The Leak That Changed Horror History
To understand the original Scream 2, you must first understand the leak. In early 1997, as production was gearing up for a summer shoot, a rough draft of Williamson’s script was stolen. It was uploaded to the early internet—specifically to the movie gossip site Ain’t It Cool News and various Usenet groups.
Within days, the entire ending was public knowledge. Fans knew who the killers were. They knew who lived. They knew who died.
In a pre-social media era, this was an atomic bomb. Dimension Films and director Wes Craven realized that if they shot the script as written, thousands of fans would walk into the theater already knowing the third-act reveals. The meta commentary of Scream had turned back on itself—the movie about sequels was being destroyed by the very audience it sought to entertain.
Williamson and Craven were forced to make a devastating choice: scrap everything and rewrite the final act from scratch, often writing pages moments before they were shot on location in Georgia. The result was the Scream 2 we know. But what was lost?