How MTV’s Scream Will Make You Nostalgic For the Original Movies—and How It’s Totally Different

Executive producers Jill Blotevogel, Jaime Paglia, and the cast explain how the new series is completely updated for a new generation

By Sydney Bucksbaum Jun 29, 2015 8:00 PMTags
Scream, MTVMTV

Lock your doors, don't go seeking out mysterious bumps in the night and don't get separated from the group, folks...there's a killer on the loose and we're sticking to the classic horror movie tropes to stay alive!

MTV is breaking into the slasher horror genre with its reboot of Scream, and this gorier, darker show is going to become your new obsession, whether you love getting the pants scared off you or not. (A horror genre expert and a total horror wuss both give the pilot two thumbs-up!)

E! News caught up with the young cast as well as the executive producers to find out if the new show is meant for fans of the original movies, or if it's aimed towards a new generation and a new audience completely. Good news: everyone's welcome to hop on board this fandom!

MTV

"The project had been in development for about two years with Dimension and the Weinsteins and MTV and it had gone through so many variations and nothing was really clicking," executive producer Jill Blotevogel tells E! News. "For me, it was really just getting back to the basics. At one point there was going to be a supernatural entity at work, and I was like, that's not Scream! Scream is a killer wearing a mask, and a sense of humor and characters that you love. So it finally all came together when we got back to basics."

Watching MTV's new version of Scream will definitely give you nostalgia for the original movies since the TV show pays homage to the films at every turn.

"We will have all those moments that call back to the movie, whether we draw attention to it or not," Blotevogel says. "It's almost like you can play Scream bingo while watching!"

Executive producer Jaime Paglia is excited to tackle "the dual challenge of getting the people who like the original movies to come and recognize the tone and humor and self-referential quality and be able to get involved and invested in these new characters."

"But we also want it to be something else, completely new for a new, younger audience who haven't seen the original movies," Paglia tells E! News. "At a certain level, you have to acknowledge certain horror tropes, certain rules of horror that were acknowledged in the movies. Never say, 'I'll be right back.' That's the cardinal rule! So we have to give a wink and nod to those things. We will pay homage to that along the way, because how could we not?"

MTV

The cast promises that the show is keeping what made the films so iconic intact.

"We're keeping the same aesthetic, that self-aware, comedic vibe, along with keeping it very scary, very gory," Brianne Tju, who plays Riley, tells E! News. "You won't be disappointed."

John Karna, who plays horror movie aficionado Noah, agrees.

"We're catering to the crowd of fans of the original movies, we put a lot of clues and easter eggs here and there so that people who have been watching horror movies their whole lives, we can serve them in a nice way," Karna tells E! News. "I like to think of the show as a spiritual sequel to the movies. We take the spirit and we take what makes it Scream, without having every detail exactly the same so we can still surprise people and bring it to a newer generation."

Series star Willa Fitzgerald adds that what makes the show feel like the original movies is what also sets it apart from them.

MTV

"The series is going to feel a lot like the movies in that there's going to be satire, references to modern culture, and a real attention to technology like there was in the original movies," Fitzgerald tells E! News. "But obviously it's been updated from landline phones to cell phones, using Twitter, Instagram, things like that."

And that social media aspect makes everything that much more frightening. 

"Our show is modern. Instead of just a clunky phone where the killer can reach you with just a phone call, our killer can always see you with all the social media outlets we have these days," Bex Taylor-Klaus, who plays Aubrey, tells E! News. "It's absolutely terrifying just how easily a killer can access you nowadays. It's really eye-opening."

The fact that this new Ghostface has access to every part of these teens' lives at the touch of a screen means the stakes are higher than ever.

MTV

"The biggest difference between the movies and our show is the nature of our killer and how he operates," Paglia says. "We live in a time of social media, and we're going to use that to our advantage. This is a killer who's tech-savvy, who has a plan, who is methodical, and when the killer shows up, someone dies. There aren't any near-misses or miraculous saves. This is life-and-death. The stakes are real. This is a methodical psychopath who can compete with the Hannibals, the Dexters, the killers on The Following and all those other shows on TV now. We had to evolve our killer while still keeping the DNA of the original franchise."

And Karna hopes that modern makeover is what's going to hook the audience, new fans and old alike. 

"When the Scream movies first came out, they revitalized the slasher movie genre," Karna says. "Hopefully what we're doing is finding a way to revitalize it in a place where technology is so prevalent. People are always on their phones, and they can always be tracked and found because of them. How are we still unsafe in light of all this new technology? We're making it scary for the snapchat generation, you know? [Laughs] Whoever is killing everyone on our show has a really good idea on how to freak everyone out with their phones! It's awesome."

MTV

Something else that's different to keep Scream fresh? The victims characters.

"What we've done is not copy all the characters from the movies, but rather we blended them together in each character," Amadeus Serafini, who plays new kid in town Kieran, tells E! News. "So you still have all the same characteristics, but now everyone has a little bit of some characters in them. We pay homage to the movies, but in a clever way."

And these aren't going to be some two-dimensional victims either, since the show is going to make you care about each one before they die. 

"Something we changed is that all our characters can look like stereotypes from the outside looking in but as you delve into the show, our writers did such a great job of breaking them down and making them real people," Carlson Young, who plays mean girl Brooke, tells E! News.

MTV

The showrunners credit the time a full season of episodes gives them when it comes to fully fleshing out the characters and story.

"Since movies have to start and end in 90 minutes, and everything has to wrap by then, for us, we got to create a deeper mystery than what you see in the movies," Blotevogel says. "We also got to create two big story arcs: we created a mystery that's in the past, and one that's playing out in present day that is powered by the one in the past."

And both of them are equal parts disturbing, horrifying and totally gripping. Mark your calendars now: Scream premieres Tuesday, June 30 at 10 p.m. on MTV.