A Scream (2022) Alternate Cut? Radio Silence Offers Details
Scream (2022) slayed the box office, grossing over $137 million worldwide and reinvigorating the franchise begun by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson. But it turns out, an alternate studio-mandated cut nearly slashed the vision to pieces.
Filmmaking duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka, Radio Silence), recently sat down with THR to open the wound on what almost happened during their journey with Ghostface.
“There were two cuts of that movie“, says Bettinelli-Olpin. “There was the one that exists and everyone has seen. Then there was another cut where the first half was totally different. It was just a very shortened version of the first half of the movie, and that was the studio cut at the end of the day.“
Adds Gillett, “Yeah, what they valued about the movie was very different from what we valued about the movie at the end of the day. That’s how you end up in those bake-offs.”
“100 percent. This keeps coming up for us [in post],” continued Bettinelli-Olpin. “The things that we love the most in anything we make are usually the things that have the biggest target on them in the edit to cut. They’re the things that are a little off-kilter and offbeat.”
Notes Gillett, “And they may seem inessential.”
“Yeah, we’ll hear, “Do we need this? Why is this here? This isn’t what would normally happen in every movie,” continues Bettinelli-Olpin. “And our reaction is, ‘Well, yeah, that’s why it’s there. That’s why we like it.’ So there was some of that in the bake-off for Scream 5. The nutshell version is we tested both of them, and because the second half was the same in each one, they both tested extremely similar. But when you went into the details of it — and more than anything, when you watched the reactions — people who saw the cut that exists had a great time.”
“They internalized it,” says Gillett.
“Yeah, they talked about it in an excited way on a character level,” adds Bettinelli-Olpin. “With the other version, they were like, “Yeah, it was cool. I liked it. ” But there was no energy behind it, and they weren’t attaching to any of the characters. They didn’t really care. So that really helped us get our version into theaters.
“If people are not familiar with the data from that preview process, you get extremely granular information about what people like, what people didn’t, how people responded to the characters, how people respond to certain scenes,” says Gillett. “And that is where it was clear that one cut was scoring much higher than the other. It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose. So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple weeks.”
Considering the box office success and overwhelmingly positive reception from fans, it sure sounds like sticking with the vision of the filmmakers was the way to go for Scream V. Imagine that.
Make sure to check out the next film from Radio Silence, Ready or Not 2, walking down the aisle and into theaters this Friday, March 20th.
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