'Scream 7' Director Reveals Why He Really Left After the Melissa Barrera Firing

In November 2023, Spyglass Media Group fired Melissa Barrera after she shared pro-Palestinian statements on social media. Soon after, Jenna Ortega exited the film, followed by director Christopher Landon, who had successfully revived the franchise, thanks in large part to Barrera and Ortega.

Now, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Landon is revealing why he walked away: a barrage of online backlash and death threats, many accusing him of being responsible for Barrera’s firing.

“I got messages saying, ‘I’m going to find your kids, and I’m going to kill them because you support child murder,’” said Landon, who has two young children. “The head of security at various studios and the FBI had to examine the threats. It was highly aggressive and really scary.”

That alone would be reason enough. But the franchise, which he had helped rebuild, was also crumbling through no fault of his own. “I did not fire her. A lot of people think I had something to do with it, and it was not my doing. I had no control of the situation at all. I think in the absence of people understanding how Hollywood works and what the hierarchy is, the fans were like, ‘That’s the guy.’ And so they came for me, knives out,” he said.

His “dream job turned into a nightmare,” and it simply wasn’t worth the abuse. Landon has since moved on—he directed this weekend’s Drop and is returning to the Happy Death Day franchise he launched. He holds no resentment and is rooting for Kevin Williamson, the original Scream writer, to keep the Scream franchise humming.

“Kevin probably made a banger of a movie, because he knows it better than anybody. It’s going to be awesome.”

In that same interview, Landon also said that he left the Arachnaphobia reboot because he didn’t want to compromise on one specific point, although he didn’t elaborate. “I wasn’t going to make a change that really felt like a soul-crushing, sell-out, bad change.” And Landon is in demand enough that he doesn’t have to.

Source: Vanity Fair