2022’s Scream was nearly carved up like one of Ghostface’s victims, as the studio ordered a truncated version of the film.
Radio Silence directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett spoke to THR about the alternate cut of the slasher saga’s fifth installment.
“There were two cuts of that movie,” Bettinelli-Olpin reveals. “There was the one that exists and everyone has seen, then there was another cut where the first half was totally different. It was just a very shortened version of the first half of the movie, and that was the studio cut at the end of the day.”
“What they valued about the movie was very different from what we valued about the movie at the end of the day,” says Gillett.
“This keeps coming up for us [in post-production],” Bettinelli-Olpin notes. “The things that we love the most in anything we make are usually the things that have the biggest target on them in the edit to cut. They’re the things that are a little off-kilter and offbeat.”
“And they may seem inessential,” Gillett adds.
“The nutshell version is we tested both of them, and because the second half was the same in each one, they both tested extremely similar,” Bettinelli-Olpin recalls. “But when you went into the details of it — and more than anything, when you watched the reactions — people who saw the cut that exists had a great time.”
He continues, They talked about it in an excited way on a character level. With the other version, they were like, ‘Yeah, it was cool. I liked it.’ But there was no energy behind it, and they weren’t attaching to any of the characters. They didn’t really care. So that really helped us get our version into theaters.”
“If people are not familiar with the data from that preview process,” Gillett explains, “you get extremely granular information about what people like, what people didn’t, how people responded to the characters, how people respond to certain scenes. And that is where it was clear that one cut was scoring much higher than the other.
“It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose. So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple weeks.”
The filmmakers’ cut proved to be successful, revitalizing the iconic horror franchise with a $137 million worldwide gross.
Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opens in theaters on March 20. They’re currently gearing up for The Mummy 4, due out on May 19, 2028.