As reported last week, when the third season of Scream premieres in 2018, the six episodes will air as a three night event. Now, MTV president, Chris McCarthy is talking about other changes being made to the MTV horror series.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter McCarthy confirms Scream is officially turning into an anthology, ahead of the season three premiere on MTV, starring Tyga and C.J. Wallace.
Here’s more, from THR:
Scream is being rebooted with a focus on the African-American community and Queen Latifah is producing that as well as Calabasas. How much are you focused on telling more inclusive stories?
MTV is always about being in culture and ahead of culture. Our demo is 18-34 and 12-34 in the afternoons. When you look at that age range, more than 50 percent is nonwhite. So in many ways multicultural isn’t multicultural anymore; it’s just cultural. So when we look at the stories that we tell and the way that we tell them, we want to be as forward leaning on the screen as culture is itself. Our desire is to get to a pipeline that matches our audience so that we have 50 percent of our content coming from diverse producers, writers, production companies and to lead the industry in that way.
Scream is morphing into an anthology, something the original showrunners considered before the show launched. What’s the long-term plan for that franchise?
Scream is an amazing franchise. Why not? We had a great partnership with [producers] the Weinsteins and said let’s throw the rule book out. Let’s look at the broader culture and see where we see opportunities and then let’s push ourselves. We came to a great place where we were like let’s just make this amazing six-hour event and bring in musicians and pop culture storylines. How do we actually make this a fun event that we could potentially do every year? That is our hope.
In success, does this get rebooted with a new cast and premise every season?
What FX did in American Horror Story was groundbreaking. We would like to do that in this genre with more comedic sensibility, a little bit younger and a little less serious. We think that it’s a great model. We’re going to elevate our own stakes by doing it as a three-night, six-hour event, running into the streaming of it all and actually create events around the country too. I think we’re probably going to see those stories and those characters change but a great horror story is a great horror story.
The Faith Evans mini, Scream — with its casting — and Calabasas with its concept and producing team all have ties to the music industry. Will everything be rooted in music, be it in the creative or the casting?
Totally. Music is our life. That has always been our soundtrack and that always will be our soundtrack, that’s when we are at our best. We are observers of culture and carnivores of pop culture.
What do you think? Do you plan to tune in for the Scream TV series reboot, when it premieres on MTV?
WTF IT’S NOT EVEN SCREAM ANYMORE, IT WAS GOOD THE WAY IT WAS BEFORE, AND ON TOP OF THAT, THEY MIGHT NOT EVEN HAVE A GUY LIKE NOAH OR GUSTAVO AND THEY WERE ******* AWESOME. NOT WATCHING THIS!!