Scream star Matthew Lillard has discussed the original handling of his franchise character, Stu Macher, as depicted in the recent horror series installment, Scream 7.
Lillard’s character was the boyfriend of Ghostface victim Tatum and a close friend of final girl Sidney Prescott. He is then revealed as one of the two Ghostface killers, alongside Sidney’s boyfriend Billy Loomis, motivated by the reveal that Sidney’s mother was having an affair with Billy’s father (later elaborated on and slightly reconned in Scream 3).
Stu is killed off by Sidney during the action-packed climax and is written off as dead for the following five films.
By writer and director Kevin Williamson, Scream 7 stars the previous cast members Neve Campbell, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, David Arquette, Courteney Cox and Lillard. New faces include Isabel May, Anna Camp, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, McKenna Grace, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Mark Consuelos, Tim Simons, and Joel McHale.
The seventh installment sees Sidney try to balance motherhood, keep her final girl fame at bay and protect her daughter, Tatum, from a new Ghostface copycat who is forging their own murder spree.
The film kick-started fan theories of Lillard’s Stu returning to the franchise following the trailer, concluding with a mysterious voice stating, “This is gonna be fun”. The top comment on the trailer’s YouTube post reads “That’s 1,000,000% Matthew Lillard’s voice at the end” and was endorsed by 28,000 likes.
These theories were partially proven right as Stu did return in Scream 7, yet as an AI generated model in videos, calls and voice recordings, to document the changing contextual landscape the franchise is now being progressed within in addition to the house phones Ghostface calls on being replaced with iPhones.
Lillard sat down in a recent interview to give insight into a previously cut post-credit scene from the film, which implied the original Ghostface actually did survive his apparent grizzly demise via a TV crushing his head in the 1996 original.
The actor reveals he “told Kevin Williamson, we spent the entire movie proving that Stu is alive, and then if he doesn’t come out that door people are going to be bummed.”
“So, what we should do is we should shoot a post-credit sequence where it’s just Stu watching TV somewhere, alive,” he explained.
Lillard then added the scene was “shot” and “when they showed it [to test audiences], they showed it without credits.”
However, this editing choice proved to be an obstacle preventing the plot twist pay-off.
“So, they go to the end and then they show me in a reflection watching TV, and it didn’t work,” Lillard elaborated. “So, it didn’t work because they didn’t test it right, but I think it would have been completely [different as a credit scene].”
Scream 7 grossed $214 million at the box office from a budget of $45 million, placing it as the highest-grossing film of the franchise ahead of Scream VI and the first film. However, it is the lowest ranked installment on Rotten Tomatoes at 30%, with Scream 2 being the highest with 83%.
An eighth film is officially in the works.
Source: Screen Rant
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