Thirty years in, Scream has developed its own post-mortem ritual: survive the movie, then immediately start talking about the sequel.

This time, the cast seems happy to join us.

Scream 8 is already moving forward with sisters Lilla and Nora Zuckerman writing the screenplay, following the franchise-record success of Scream 7. We also know Neve Campbell brought Kevin Williamson an idea for the next chapter while they were making the seventh film — one he said people quickly responded to.

Now two more familiar faces are making their intentions known.

Courteney Cox wants to direct Scream 8

While promoting Evil Genius at TIFF, Courteney Cox told Deadline she would be very interested in directing a future Scream.

And after seven appearances as Gale Weathers, she has a reasonably persuasive résumé line:

“I think I should, honestly. Nobody knows more about that movie than I do. I mean, and the creator, and Wes Craven, and the writers, and everybody who’s been in it. But I think it’d be great and fun and a good publicity thing. Get on it.”

The timing makes the suggestion more than a cute soundbite. Cox is at Toronto with Evil Genius, her latest feature as director, while Scream 8 is actively being written.

Nothing indicates she has actually been approached to direct it. But Gale Weathers pitching herself for the job — and immediately adding that it would be good publicity — is so thoroughly Gale that perhaps the campaign has already begun.

Isabel May knows a little more than she’s saying

Meanwhile, Isabel May has been thinking about what surviving Scream 7 actually means for Tatum Evans.

Spoilers for Scream 7 follow.

Speaking with USA Today after the film’s release, May expressed interest in returning and confirmed that she is already somewhat in the loop about the idea being developed for Scream 8.

In fact, she may have contributed to it.

“I know a little bit. Not too much. I may have participated in influencing it a little bit, with one little thing — very minor, nothing important necessarily. So I’m an itty-bitty, little pinky toe involved.”

She was careful not to suggest she knows the whole plan. Quite the opposite: May added that there is probably plenty being developed that she knows nothing about.

But what she does want from the sequel is much clearer.

May said it would “be fun to further explore Tatum and see her post-Ghostface” — especially now that Sidney’s daughter has discovered something about herself that she did not believe was there at the beginning of the film.

“Her mother is someone who’s put on a pedestal for being a brave, fearless person, and [Tatum] doesn’t think she’s that. As the story evolves, and she tries to take some sort of power into her own hands and be useful, she discovers that she is capable and has a resolve that she clearly didn’t have at the beginning, and armor.”

That distinction matters.

Tatum begins Scream 7 living beneath an intimidating inheritance. Her mother is Sidney Prescott, someone who has spent decades being defined by survival. Tatum does not initially see herself in those terms.

By the end, she has earned some of that armor herself.

But she has also paid for it.

Unlike Sidney after the original Scream, Tatum emerges from her first Ghostface massacre having lost almost her entire circle of friends. Sidney still had Dewey, Randy and Gale. Tatum’s version of survival is considerably lonelier.

May sees that as the real story waiting on the other side.

“You have to grieve and mourn and miss the people that you loved forever, and now question everyone in your life forever, too. It’s a generational curse that’s just been handed down to her.”

And that may be the most interesting inheritance Scream 7 leaves behind.

Sidney spent much of her adult life trying to keep Ghostface — and everything that came with him — from reaching her family. Tatum survives anyway, and suddenly understands the cost her mother has been carrying since Woodsboro.

For May, the question now is what Tatum does with it.

Does she keep fighting against that pessimism? Or does surviving Ghostface change the way she trusts people, forms relationships and participates in the world around her?

“There’s so much to explore,” May said.

So what do we actually know about Scream 8?

At this stage, the facts remain pleasantly uncomplicated: Lilla and Nora Zuckerman are writing the screenplay. Cox wants to direct, but has not been announced. May wants to return and knows something about the developing concept. And an idea originating with Neve Campbell appears to have helped start the conversation.

That is already considerably more than the usual post-sequel fog.

Williamson has also previously entertained the possibility that Scream 7 could begin another trilogy — an intriguing bit of unfinished business for the writer who once intended Scream 4 to do exactly that.

Whether Scream 8 becomes chapter two of that larger design is still unknown.

For now, Cox has volunteered for the chair, May has one pinky toe in the story, and Sidney’s family curse still has somewhere to go.

For a franchise that once spent an entire sequel arguing that sequels suck, Scream remains remarkably committed to proving otherwise.