Kevin Williamson

Before he terrified audiences with a Ghostface mask, Kevin Williamson was just a kid obsessed with movies—especially the adventures of Steven Spielberg. Growing up in New Bern, North Carolina, he dreamed of acting, not writing. After high school, he pursued theater and communications, chasing a future in front of the camera. A few minor TV parts followed, but nothing that could be called a break.

In 1990, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles, hoping the city would open its doors. It didn’t. What L.A. did give him, though, was a detour: a screenwriting class at UCLA. There, Williamson wrote his first full script, Teaching Mrs. Tingle—then called Killing Mrs. Tingle. It didn’t sell, but it sharpened his voice and set the stage for something much bigger.

One night, while house-sitting for a friend, Williamson watched a TV special about the Gainesville Ripper. That true-crime story sparked an idea. He escaped to Palm Springs, locked himself away for three days, and emerged with Scream. What followed was a grueling, months-long battle to get it made. But when Scream finally opened on December 20, 1996, it didn’t just succeed—it reinvented the horror genre.

The film’s sharp wit and self-awareness launched three sequels, a requel, and an entire meta-horror movement. Williamson became the voice of a new generation of genre fans—and soon, of teenage drama as well. In 1998, he created Dawson’s Creek, which defined late-’90s television with the same kind of pop-cultural honesty that made Scream a phenomenon.

He later returned to horror with The Faculty, Cursed, and Scream 4, before turning to television again with The Vampire Diaries and The Following. Decades later, Williamson helped shepherd Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023) as executive producer, preserving the series’ legacy for a new era.

In 2026, nearly thirty years after he first wrote “What’s your favorite scary movie?”, Williamson came full circle—co-writing Scream 7 alongside Guy Busick and stepping behind the camera to direct it himself. A fitting return for the storyteller who rewrote the rules of horror—and still refuses to play by anyone else’s.