Ever since the Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett signed on to make Scream 5, I’ve wondered if they were going to bring along their star scream queen, Samara Weaving. The rising Aussie actress masterfully led the horror comedy from beginning to bloody end, and it seems like a no-brainer for her to work with the filmmakers again for the high-profile genre sequel.
Casting has begun to stack up, with David Arquette and Courteney Cox officially reprising their Scream roles as Dewey Riley and Gale Weathers. It was also announced that In the Heights’ Melissa Barrera and You’s Jenna Ortega are joining the horror flick, too. Unfortunately, Samara Weaving will not be joining them, but she had a solid reason for this. In her words:
We were talking about it, but our schedules aren’t gonna work, which is a bummer. We talked about it a lot, but unfortunately, because of scheduling, I couldn’t do it. I’ll still be [in Australia], working on Nine Perfect Strangers, so we couldn’t make it work. Traveling is very difficult these days.
It sounds like Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett instantly thought about their Ready or Not star for their next project but, due to scheduling concerns, they couldn’t make it happen. Scream 5 is set to begin filming this fall in Wilmington, North Carolina ahead of its 2021 release date. Weaving resides in Australia and will be working on her next project there, so she can’t be in two places at once.
Another factor to keep in mind here, which Weaving mentions, is how different travel is right now. In another year, Weaving might have been able to potentially go back and forth. Since Australia has enacted a travel ban (along with many other countries) in order to control the spread of COVID-19, this would be near impossible unless she’s planning on sticking around in the U.S. for a while.
Plus, the actress already sounds like she has an exciting project to work on instead. Samara Weaving will be in the series Nine Perfect Strangers with Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon and Regina Hall. The drama is an adaptation of a novel by Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty and follows a group of people at a remote health resort.
Following her bummer reveal to Collider, Samara Weaving shared her own excitement for Scream 5 with these words:
They just really know tone, and they are such a great team. Matt and Tyler are just incredible. They’re so collaborative and they’re really open-minded, both with producers and also with their actors and writers. They’re really respectful. I think that they’re gonna be really, really huge.
They look to be great choices to continue Wes Craven’s legacy with the Scream franchise after almost a decade without Ghostface around the corner. If you have yet to see Ready or Not, its currently available to stream over on HBO Max. We at CinemaBlend are huge fans of the horror release, which was vastly unseen last year.
Hey, maybe Samara Weaving will get to work with them again for a Ready or Not sequel? Stay tuned here for more Scream 5 news as it jumps out at us.
