Scream: Courteney Cox says a popular character was initially going to be killed off in first film

Scream has certainly etched its name in pop culture history as one of the most popular and successful slasher film franchises of all time. And after almost a decade, the iconic Ghostface has hit the big screen yet again with Scream 5, which was released this month. One of the film’s stars, Courteney Cox, recently opened up about how makers had initially intended a popular character from the franchise to be killed off in the first film.

In conversation with Pedestrian TV, Cox revealed that the producers had initially decided that the character of Dewey Riley, the deputy sheriff Woodsboro, was to be killed off in the first film. But after seeing how well the character was portrayed by David Arquette and how positively test audiences had reacted to the character, they abandoned the idea. In the first film, director Wes Craven had initially scripted two endings, one where Dewey died and another in which he survived.

Dewey has been an important character in all the Scream films, heroically facing off against Ghostface on several occasions. Dewey appears in all the films of the franchise, along with Gale Weathers and Sidney Prescott, the latter two played by Cox and Neve Campbell respectively.

The fifth and latest instalment in the franchise, Scream 5, sees the dreaded killer Ghostface return to Woodsboro to terrorise a new group of young people. The film stars Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, and Jack Quaid. The film was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and is the first film in the series not to be directed by creator Craven, who passed away in 2015. In addition to the five films, the franchise has also spawned a television series of the same name, which can be streamed on Netflix.