The creative mind of Kevin Williamson is like a dark attic filled with ideas—some waiting to be woven into something unforgettable. In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Williamson shared how his original concepts for Scream 3 evolved into Fox’s thrilling TV series, The Following.
Williamson’s fascination with serial killers began during his research into Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper who inspired Scream. “Back when I was researching Danny Rolling, I wanted to write about a serial killer on a college campus, and an FBI agent hunting down a college professor,” Williamson explained. “But then I decided to do Scream.”
This idea of a serial killer professor would remain dormant until Williamson revisited it years later for The Following.
Williamson also revealed his original, chilling vision for Scream 3:
“In my original story for Scream 3, the killers were basically a fan club of Woodsboro kids that had formed because of Stab 1 and Stab 2. They were all doing the killings, and the big surprise of the movie was when Sidney walked into the house after Ghostface had killed everyone… and they all rose up. None of them were actually dead, and they’d planned the whole thing.”
The motive? A quest for fame.
When Williamson left the project, Ehren Kruger was brought in to write the final chapter of the trilogy, taking Scream 3 in a different direction.
While the fan club concept was abandoned for Scream 3, Williamson wasn’t done with the idea. Elements of this plotline reappeared in Scream 4 through Jill Roberts’ twisted quest for infamy. But it was with The Following that these ideas truly came to life. Williamson explained:
“All those ideas metamorphosed into The Following.”
In the series, James Purefoy’s Joe Carroll leads a cult of killers—a reflection of Williamson’s original Scream 3 blueprint.
As a Scream fan, it’s impossible not to imagine what Scream 3 might have looked like with Williamson’s original script. The idea of Sidney confronting an entire fan club of killers remains an intriguing “what if” scenario for the franchise.
Scrapped Ideas
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