‘Scream 4’ Star Alison Brie Shares ‘Problem’ with Slasher Franchise

Alison Brie thinks too many characters have survived the most recent Scream movies.

Brie, who appeared — and was killed off — in 2011’s Scream 4, offered a hot take on the slasher franchise when she and her husband Dave Franco appeared on the Aug. 5 episode of the Shut Up Evan podcast to discuss their favorite horror movies and their recent movie Together. After Franco, 40, suggested that the franchise find a way for Brie’s character Rebecca Walters to return for an upcoming movie, “even though she died brutally,” Brie opined that perhaps the series’ latest installments have not been brutal enough.

“Can I tell you my problem with the current era of the Scream franchise? Too many people live,” she said. “The ‘core four’ needs to die!”

The most recent two Scream movies, released in 2022 and 2023, costarred Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega as a sister duo who survive attacks by the series’ antagonist Ghostface in the fictional town of Woodsboro and New York City, respectively. The two were joined by costars Mason Gooding and Jasmine Savoy Brown, who portray twins Chad and Mindy, whose uncle is Jamie Kennedy’s character Randy, from the original Scream and Scream 2. All four of those characters survived 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI, though neither Barrera, 35, nor Ortega, 22, will reprise their roles in the upcoming Scream 7.

“We killed [Kennedy’s character] in Scream 2. We should be down to two of the ‘core four’ by Scream 7,” Brie said of the franchise. When her husband Franco noted that David Arquette’s character Dewey Riley was killed off in 2022’s Scream, she said, “I know, and that was very sad! That was a mistake. Keep the main three.”

Brie portrayed a publicist for Scream franchise lead, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), in 2011’s Scream 4, which opens as Sidney returns to her hometown to promote a self-help book about her experiences as the victim of multiple attacks by serial killers using the Ghostface persona in the first three Scream films. Sidney fires Rebecca after Ghostface attacks resume in Scream 4, and Rebecca herself is murdered in a parking garage as she walks to her car.

Barrera was removed from Scream 7’s cast due to her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war in the fall of 2023, as the The Hollywood Reporter reported at the time. Deadline reported shortly after Barrera’s exit was announced that Ortega would not return to the series, citing scheduling conflicts with other projects. As a result, Campbell, who did not appear in Scream VII due to a pay dispute, returns as the movie’s star.

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Despite Arquette’s character’s death, Deadline reported back in March that he will also appear in the movie in some capacity, as will the villains portrayed by Scott Foley in 2000’s Scream 3 and Matthew Lillard in the 1996 original.

Scream 7 will release in theaters Feb. 26, 2026. Brie and Franco’s latest horror project Together is in theaters now.