Original Scream's First Script Killed Off Dewey, Reveals Courteney Cox
Scream star Courteney Cox confirms that David Arquette's Dewey was meant to die in the 1996 original, but test screenings convinced Craven otherwise.
Spoiler Warning: This article includes plot points from Scream (2022)
Courteney Cox reveals that David Arquette’s Dewey was originally scripted to die in the first Scream film. Both actors are mainstays of the long-running Scream franchise and have appeared in every installment in the series to date. Currently, they can be seen in Scream (2022), which released exclusively in theaters on January 14.
The Scream franchise kicked off in 1996 under the direction of the late Wes Craven, who helmed every installment until his death in 2015. A thorough dissection of slasher franchises and tropes, the series follows a group of individuals from the fictional Woodsboro, California as Ghostface stalks them. Unlike many slasher franchises, the killer is never the same from movie to movie and is almost always someone co-opting the Ghostface persona to go after Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) for personal gain or revenge. In the series, Cox plays tough journalist Gale Weathers and Arquette plays Woodsboro Deputy (and eventually Sheriff) Dewey Riley. The latest Scream is helmed by Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and once again sees Sidney, Gale, and Dewey face off against a white-masked killer.
Now, with the latest installment in the Scream franchise in theaters and making a killing at the box office, new information about the franchise as a whole has come to light. Specifically, Cox opens up to Pedestrian.TV about working on the original Scream and confirms that, in an early draft of the script, Arquette’s Dewey was originally marked for death. However, Craven ultimately spared him due to the positive reactions he received in test screenings. Check out Cox's full quote below:
I was actually with one of the producers not long ago and there was a time, I think it was in the first Scream, where David’s character Dewey was gonna be killed off, then they saw how he came across and people loved him so they scrapped it.
In the original Scream, Dewey is badly injured while investigating Ghostface’s arrival at the party during the climax of the movie. However, he is eventually revealed to be alive at the end, leaving him suffering from a limp during Scream 2. But, he stayed around, remaining one of the main protagonists of the Scream series for the bulk of its run.
Sadly, however, Dewey’s luck did eventually run out. Though the character managed to survive the reign of four Ghostface killers, he was ultimately killed by the latest iteration in the newest film – serving a role not unlike Han Solo in The Force Awakens. That said, it’s a testament to the power of the character that he was spared by Craven so many times after the first Scream and ultimately used as the key sacrificial lamb in this latest outing.
Source: Pedestrian.TV