Billy’s ‘Scream’ return was originally a trilogy turning Sam into Ghostface (exclusive)

Brace yourselves because this might make Scream fans…well, scream!

In a new conversation with Entertainment Weekly for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Skeet Ulrich sheds light on the original plan for his Scream character, serial killer Billy Loomis, before the big creative shift that pivoted the story of Melissa Barrera’s Sam Carpenter back to Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott for the seventh film in the franchise.

When asked if it’s a spoiler to question Ulrich on whether he would return as Billy Loomis for Scream 7 (in theaters Feb. 27), he says, “I’ve been vocal about that. I’m not. When we talked about coming back for 5, it was a three-picture arc for Billy Loomis to slowly turn his daughter into the killer. Obviously, those things didn’t pan out, given certain things that happened. But, no, I know nothing about the seventh.”

Ulrich’s Billy Loomis died in the original Scream of 1996 as one half of the Ghostface killers with Matthew Lillard‘s Stu Macher. However, when Radio Silence filmmaking duo Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin took the directing reins for the fifth Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023), Billy returned in ghost form to guide his daughter, Barrera’s Sam Carpenter, the de facto lead of the two movies.

The “certain thing that happened” Ulrich is referring to are things Scream fans already know full well: Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin departed Scream 7 due to scheduling with another project (vampire ballerina flick Abigail), Barrera was fired from the production over social media posts related to the Israel-Gaza conflict, and then the exits of costar Jenna Ortega and new Scream 7 director Christopher Landon were announced shortly after.

The direction for the seventh installment soon took a new path. Kevin Williamsonthe original Scream‘s screenwriter, came back to direct another movie with the returning Scream Queen herself, Campbell, who sat out the sixth installment over pay. Scream 7 is now a story about Sidney’s family, including daughter Tatum (Isabel May) and cop husband Mark (Joel McHale), terrorized by a new Ghostface.

Ulrich has said in the past that he didn’t read any scripts, but his comments may still come as a surprise. Even though Sam becoming the Scream 7 killer remains a popular fan theory of what could’ve been, little is so definitively stated on the record.

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Barrera told Flickering Myth in 2023, “It would be my dream for Sam to be Ghostface.” That same year, she told Digital Spy“She’s the hero but she’s also kind of the villain. It’s this contradiction in her that I find fascinating.”

The directors themselves often hinted at the darkness within Sam when alluding to where they might’ve taken the franchise next.

“Sidney inherits this thing from her mom, right or wrong. She is paying the price for something that’s happened in the past and that for us is just always a really interesting idea,” Gillett told Comic Book Resources in 2022. “When a character living in the moment is having to kind of reconcile themselves with something that’s happened in their past or with somebody that they have an attachment to in their past. And, for us, certainly, Sam Carpenter is a proxy for that idea in so many ways, and her connection to Billy. All that for us is just such an interesting world to explore.”