A major moment of character development for Sidney in Scream 3 was pitched by Neve Campbell herself. Campbell appeared as consummate final girl Sidney Prescott in all five of the currently released Scream films (though she won’t be returning in Scream VI due to receiving an offer that she felt was below her worth to the franchise). The original 1996 Scream opens with her already mourning the loss of her mother Maureen, who was killed a year before the events of the film, and each subsequent project sees her fight to survive yet another round of slaying perpetrated by a killer in a Ghostface mask.
Perri Nemiroff of Collider recently sat down with Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson for an interview. Although the screenplay of Scream 3 was ultimately written by Ehren Kruger, Williamson did provide the story treatment for the project, and he revealed that Campbell was instrumental in deciding where Sidney’s life had gone between the events of 1997’s Scream 2 and its 2000 sequel. He revealed that he feels like audiences implicitly connect with trauma survivors, and “Neve was very smart” for coming up with the idea that Sidney has turned that trauma into an outlet for helping other victims as part of a telephone hotline even though she has hidden herself away in a secluded mountain home. Read his full quote below:
I feel like Sidney connects to a lot of people and I think Laurie Strode connects. You connect with Laurie Strode, anyone who survived that kind of trauma. I think Neve was very smart about saying, “Why don’t we put her as an advocate for victims in the sequel?”
It was her idea to do all that, and I think she was very smart about it, and I like the idea that Sidney has now spent her life being an advocate for other survivors of trauma and violence. So now, how do you not care about someone who spends their life doing that, you know? I think that you’ve just got to care — emotion, emotion.
How Sidney’s Character Arc Progressed After Scream 3
While Scream 3 was originally intended to bring the franchise to a close, it eventually returned with Scream 4 in 2011 and Scream in 2022, not to mention a largely unrelated reboot series on MTV in 2015. As each film progressed and jumped forward 11 years in Sidney Prescott’s life, fans were able to see how the character progressed from the point that was originally pitched by Campbell. The end of Scream 3 showed that she had overcome her trauma and opened herself up to the outside world again, but Scream 4 revealed that this progress didn’t change her advocacy for victims.
The character’s reintroduction in Scream 4 revealed that Sidney is now a successful author doing a book tour for her newest book, titled Out of Darkness: A True Story of Survival. It is a self-help book in which she shares her own experiences and encourages her readers to find their way out of the darkest moments of their lives. Even though Ghostface struck again when she visited her hometown of Woodsboro, California, her message didn’t lose any of its potency in the latest Scream.
That film saw her return to Woodsboro yet again following the death of a major character. There, she teams up with her former foe, the TV news anchor turned morning show host Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), to help teach Ghostface’s newest victims how to fight back and end the cycle of terror. All of this progress forward out of her own personal darkness came as a result of that small element of Scream 3, which just goes to show how vital Campbell really has been to the soul of the entire Scream franchise.
Key Release Dates
Scream 6
Release Date:2023-03-10
