What will the beloved horror movie franchise look like as a TV show? Executive producers Jill E. Blotevogel and Jaime Paglia explain to BuzzFeed News how their series is — and isn’t — like the Scream movies.
Bella Thorne as Nina Patterson in the first episode of MTV's Scream series.
MTV
When it was announced in October 2014 that the genre-redefining horror franchise Scream was getting turned into a weekly series on MTV, many were skeptical — especially once it was revealed the show wouldn't take place in Woodsboro, wouldn't revolve around Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell in the film franchise), and wouldn't feature the Ghostface killer.
MTV's Scream is set in the fictional Lakewood, an average suburb rocked by the brutal murder of Nina Patterson (Bella Thorne) and the revelation that it may be connected to another murder that happened 20 years prior. Emma Duvall (Willa Fitzgerald), seemingly serving as the series' Final Girl, is a high school student who quickly begins to realize her mother (Tracy Middendorf) isn't the only one in her life hiding a dark, potentially deadly secret.
The first trailer may have converted some skeptics, but horror fans are a very discerning bunch. There are still questions upon questions.
So BuzzFeed News spoke with the show's executive producers, Jill E. Blotevogel and Jaime Paglia, to find out exactly what audiences can expect when MTV's Scream premieres on June 30.
MTV
On the show, Noah Foster (John Karna) says, "You can't do a slasher movie as a TV series." Let's start right there. Can you?
Jill Blotevogel: You absolutely can. That statement for me was essentially saying to everybody who was going to question and doubt and have issues with it, I wanted to let them know I was absolutely aware of the [challenge] of doing something like this, and yet we were still going to find a way to do it and entertain the heck out of them. Essentially, it's just a wink to the audience who love horror movies and realize they exist in 90 minutes and yet we're going to take it in a different way. I also worked on a show called Harper's Island, which attempted a similar sort of thing. It was more of a classic Agatha Christie, Ten Little Indians kind of thing. It's definitely possible.
Jaime Paglia: It's really, really hard. When I came on to do this with Jill, that line in particular was the reason I thought it might be possible, because we are acknowledging the challenges right out of the gate. It's the self-referential humor; the wink and nod to the audience to say, "Hey, listen, come along for the ride. We think we'll make it worth your while." And that's what we're doing.
JB: And of course the bookend to that is Noah's line later in the episode, when he sort of counters and says, "Well, maybe you can do it if you fall in love with the characters, if you understand the Friday Night Lights of it, and then realize that, yes, there's a horror movie going on here as well."
Right. He says in order to make these deaths matter, you have to care about the characters. So are you basically writing a dramatic TV series where people are being murdered?
JB: Yes.
JP: I think that's definitely accurate. What we try to do in every moment is separate out the fact that this is a town where people are being stalked and look at them individually as characters, figure out what their secrets and lies are, and what their relationship dynamics are going to be. So if you were to watch this as a regular teen soap, you would be engaged with them and care about them and the stakes would be there. We do end up having Friday Night Lights with life-and-death stakes.
JB: And it's also creating more of a mystery around the murders than ever existed in the Scream movies. It's kind of like the way Twin Peaks used the death of Laura Palmer to set off this chain reaction of looking deep into the underbelly of that small town. We're kind of using that format more than the Scream movies ever did. They always went fast and furious with a body count, whereas ours is going to take its time a little more and dig into the mystery a little more.
