Ghostface Returns: Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley Reprise Roles in Scream 7
Spoiler alert: two of the Scream franchise's murderers have risen from the dead! Or are they?
The Ghostface killer in 'Scream.'
Deadline reported on Thursday, Jan. 30, that Scream 3's 52-year-old Scott Foley will return in an unnamed role for the horror series' seventh picture, set to release in February 2026.
The same day, Matthew Lillard, 55, who appeared in Wes Craven's original Scream, shared a video on Instagram implying that he will also participate in the impending sequel. The strange video appears to show Lillard's hand scrawling his character's iconic remark from the 1996 horror film: "My mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me!"
Brownie Harris/Paramount Pictures
Scream fans are probably wondering, didn't both Lillard and Foley's characters die in their respective films? It certainly seemed like it at the moment!
Details concerning the narrative of filmmaker and original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson's planned sequel, in which Neve Campbell, 51, and Courteney Cox, 60, reprise their roles, are scant. But the franchise has acquired plenty of borderline soapy twists over the years, and while it's unclear whether Lillard and Foley will return as their original roles, it's not uncommon for horror movie villains to return from the (seeming) dead. With that in mind, it's interesting looking back at what happened to Lillard and Foley's characters in Scream and Scream 3.
In the 1996 film Scream, Lillard played Stu Macher, best friend of Skeet Ulrich's Billy Loomis and lover of Rose McGowan's Tatum Riley, with an antic, insane energy. Late in the film, it is revealed that Billy and Stu are the serial killers behind the iconic Ghostface mask. Their intricate plan to murder Campbell's Sidney Prescott and frame her father for their murdering spree is foiled when Sidney drops a TV on Stu, apparently killing him, and shoots Billy in the head. (Lillard did appear in Scream 2 (1997) and the fifth film, Scream (2022), as a partygoer and in a voiceover role.)
Here is the metatextual twist: Lillard disclosed in a 2009 interview that his character was supposed to return as Ghostface in Scream 3, after surviving his injuries. Williamson's initial plan for the third picture, which revolved around another wave of high school killings, was eventually discarded following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. However, it's highly plausible that screenwriter Guy Busick drew on Williamson's initial concept for Stu's reappearance in Scream 7.
The version of Scream 3 that eventually made it to the big screen shifted the action to Hollywood, where Sidney—along with Cox's Gale Weathers and David Arquette's Dewey Riley—faced yet another run of Ghostface killings, this time centered on the creation of a third Stab film based on the masked killer.
Foley joins the cast as Roman Bridger, the director of Stab 3, who looks to have been slain by Ghostface. It turns out that he faked his own death and has taken on the Ghostface persona in a usually complex plot to kill Sidney because he carries a genuinely bizarre grievance against her. Roman fared no better than Billy and Stu, with Sidney stabbing him many times and Dewey shooting him in the head.
Furthermore, Roman exposes a link to Billy and Stu, claiming that he was the mastermind behind the duo's actions in the previous film and had persuaded Billy to blame Stu for their killings. With both Foley and Lillard returning, it appears that the entire dynamic may play out — though it's difficult to understand how Roman survived a bullet to the head.
