David Arquette returns from the dead for Scream 7
Another ghost of Ghostface past appears to be back from beyond the grave.
By
Nick Romano
Published on March 4, 2025 06:18PM EST
David Arquette in 'Scream' (2022). Photo: BROWNIE HARRIS/ Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group
There are a lot of ghost faces in the next
Scream movie.
After confirming the franchise returns of
Scott Foley and
Matthew Lillard, whose characters both died in previous installments over the years,
Scream 7 is now also bringing back
David Arquette,
Entertainment Weekly has learned.
Deadline Hollywood first reported the news.
Arquette was a longtime
Scream regular, having first appeared as Deputy Dewey Riley in the 1996 original opposite
Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott) and
Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers). Dewey sadly met an untimely end at the end of Ghostface's knife in 2022's
Scream.
Newly minted Anora Oscar winner Mikey Madison played the particular stab-happy killer who did the honors.
Tyler Gillett, one of the filmmakers of the fifth
Scream with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, called reading about Dewey's death in the script
"f---ing gut-wrenching." He told EW at the time, "It was like, we loved it, and we hated it, and it was brutal, and we also knew that we had to make a choice like that in this movie."
Ghostface in 'Scream VI'.
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"I think there was some nerves about it," Bettinelli-Olpin added. "I don't think it was wholly embraced, you know, by David, or by us, for sure. There were nerves of, 'Is this the right thing?' In our first conversation with David, he said, 'Think about it, think about it.' But he understood that, in order for it to be a real Scream movie, and for it to have the teeth that Scream has, that this kind of thing needed to happen."
Matthew Lillard is back for Scream 7 — here's how Stu might return
So Dewey went off into the afterlife of
Scream… but apparently there is now an after-afterlife. It's unclear how the character will return in the context of
Scream 7. The same goes for the other two that we know about. Lillard's Stu Macher, one of two killers in the first movie with
Skeet Ulrich's Billy Loomis, died by the end of that film. Foley's Roman Bridger died in
Scream 3 at the hands of Dewey.
However, it was the 2022
Scream that set a ghostly precedent. Ulrich reappeared after all this time as the phantom memory of Billy lurking in the mind of his daughter, Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera). Perhaps Sidney is now facing the ghosts of her own past.
Directed by franchise scribe Kevin Williamson,
Scream 7 will also feature Isabel May as Sidney's daughter,
Joel McHale as Sidney's husband, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown as Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin, and Cox as Gale. In confirmed but undisclosed roles are Mckenna Grace, Grace's
Ghostbusters: Afterlife costar Celeste O'Connor,
Gen V's Asa Germann,
The Fabelmans' Sam Rechner,
Pitch Perfect's Anna Camp, and Mark Consuelos.
The film, currently in production, is scheduled to hit theaters Feb. 27, 2026.
deadline.com
variety.com
