Courteney Cox has spent 30 years running from Ghostface. She is ready to consider calling the shots instead.
While promoting her new film Evil Genius at the Toronto International Film Festival, Cox was asked whether she would ever direct a Scream movie. “I think I should, honestly,” she told Deadline, adding, “Nobody knows more about that movie than I do,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
Cox immediately made room for the people who built the franchise around her, mentioning creator Kevin Williamson, late director Wes Craven, the writers and the actors who have passed through the films. She thought directing one would be “great and fun” and even joked that it would make good publicity.
Scream 8 is already in development, but no director has been announced. Cox also arrives at the conversation with something she did not have during most of her years playing Gale Weathers, two feature films of her own as a director.
Cox Has Been Inside Every ‘Scream’ Movie So Far
Cox has played reporter Gale Weathers since Wes Craven’s original Scream opened in 1996. She is the only actor to physically appear in all seven films, including Scream 7, which reunited her with Neve Campbell earlier this year.
Craven directed the first four films, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett handled 2022’s Scream and Scream VI, and Williamson moved behind the camera for Scream 7. Cox has remained Gale through all of them. If she were hired for the eighth film, she would also become the first woman to direct an installment in the franchise.
The ‘Scream 8’ Director’s Chair Is Still Open
Spyglass began developing the next film after Scream 7 crossed $200 million worldwide. TheWrap reported in March that Poker Face veterans Lilla and Nora Zuckerman had been hired to write the screenplay, but Spyglass has not announced a director or release date.
Williamson has already said he does not plan to direct the sequel. After making his franchise directing debut on Scream 7, he told the fan site Hello Sidney that he expected to step back again rather than remain at the center of the next movie.
‘Evil Genius’ Put Cox Back Behind the Camera
Cox made her feature-directing debut with the 2014 comedy Just Before I Go. She did not direct another feature for 12 years, although she continued acting and producing in the meantime.
That changed with Evil Genius, the dark true-crime film she brought to TIFF this month. The movie stars Patricia Arquette and David Harbour and dramatizes the bizarre 2003 “pizza bomber” case in Erie, Pennsylvania. Reuters reported that Cox approached the material as a dysfunctional love story threaded through the crime.