Firing Melissa Barrera From 'Scream VII' May Have Broken the Horror Series Beyond Repair

The controversial dismissal made a mess of what previously had been a surprisingly successful example of Hollywood reviving a seemingly dead franchise

It has been two months since word leaked that Melissa Barrera had been fired from Scream VII. Short version: Spyglass (or possibly just studio head Gary Barber) deemed the 33-year-old Mexican-American actress’s online posts concerning the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict to be not just in support of Palestine but antisemitic. My thoughts on that notwithstanding (opposing the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government is not antisemitic any more than opposing George W. Bush’s post-9/11 American overseas military campaigns was unpatriotic), Jenna Ortega officially left the franchise a day later. While that was, depending on who you ask, a long-planned departure related to scheduling conflicts and/or a requested salary bump, director Christopher Landon walked weeks later, declaring that a dream job had turned into a nightmare.  

As of today, Barrera is currently promoting her new movie Your Monster at Sundance, with the just released trailer for Universal’s buzzy and clever high-concept chiller Abigail (think The Ransom of Red Chief with a vampire) positioning the Radio Silence )(Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)-directed romp as a possible mid-April breakout. Landon is set to direct Big Bad, an adaptation of a Chandler Baker-penned werewolf-related short story, for Lionsgate. Ortega is still positioning herself as a definitive gen-Z movie star. So, yeah, among other takeaways, there’s more to life in Hollywood than franchises. What of what was supposed to be Spyglass’s flagship franchise?  

In an era where Hollywood is constantly trying to resurrect once-successful brands (Star Wars) and/or turn singular high-concept hits (Jumanji) into endlessly monetizable IP, Scream was a commercial success story due to being able to get out from under its predecessors’ shadow. Two years after the Paramount-distributed and Radio Silence-directed Scream pulled off a miracle, the brand is in worse shape than ever before. Fair or not, the decision has left one of the more promising recent franchise reboots in purgatory.