Jenna Ortega Not Returning for Scream 7

Summary

• Scream star Jenna Ortega will not be returning for Scream VII due to her commitment to filming the second season of Wednesday.
• Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream VII after her controversial social media posts about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
• The future of the Scream franchise remains uncertain with Barrera’s firing and Ortega’s departure, but the franchise has been highly successful, earning $911 million thus far.

Scream star Jenna Ortega will not be returning for the seventh installment in the franchise. Ortega, who starred in 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI as Tara Carpenter and helped propel the most recent film to a $169 million dollar global box office take, will be focusing her efforts on season two of Wednesday, which goes into production in 2024.

Less than 24 hours after reports came out that Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream VII thanks to her social media posts regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, it is now being reported by Deadline that Jenna Ortega will not be returning for the sequel thanks to her commitments filming the second season of Wednesday, which starts production in Ireland next year. While some have speculated that Ortega asked to be let out of her Scream VII contract in solidarity with Barrera’s firing, apparently Ortega’s departure was being discussed prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Melissa Barrera, who played Sam Carpenter in both Scream and Scream VI was fired from the production yesterday thanks to her controversial posts on Instagram which showed support for Palestine. In a statement from production company Spyglass, they doubled-down on their dismissal of the star.

“We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”

You can check out Melissa Barrera’s posts below.

Related: Tom Cruise Reportedly Stepped in to Stop His Agent Being Fired Over Controversial Social Media Posts

Will Scream VII Still Happen?

Scream 6

The sixth installment in the American meta-horror slasher franchise Scream.

Release Date March 10, 2023

Director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Cast Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Courteney Cox, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Hayden Panettiere

Rating R

Main Genre Horror

With Barrera’s firing, and now the announcement that Jenna Ortega won’t be returning to the long-running franchise, its future remains in doubt. Original star Neve Campbell bowed out of the series after what she called a “disrespectful” offer to return for Scream VI, and won’t be returning. The script for Scream VII isn’t nearly ready, which means plans for a seventh film may pivot with all the controversy surrounding it. In response to Barrera’s firing yesterday, director Christopher Landon, who has been tapped to direct the next film, sent out a post on X (formerly Twitter) that was then deleted, which read:

“This is my statement: 💔 Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make.”

The Scream franchise has raked in a whopping $911 million dollars thus far with its six entries, so it’s hard to imagine that even with the current controversies, Spyglass and Paramount would just let it go. Debuting on March 10, 2023, Scream VI saw Ghostface move from the familiar setting of Woodsboro, to New York City in order to target survivors of the ‘Woodsboro legacy murders.’

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