Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine what the state of horror might look like without the supreme achievements of Wes Craven’s 1996 horror classic, Scream.
Upending every pre-established convention around the slasher subgenre, Scream cemented one of the most popular horror franchises in pop culture history, ushering in several belobed sequels in the decades that followed.
In spite of its undeniable success in the mid ’90s and beyond, however, Scream star Matthew Lillard admits he didn’t have a high opinion of the movie while they were initially filming it.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Lillard recently revealed his thoughts and experience while shooting Scream during a panel at New York Comic Con.
“I was in the back of a car, driving home from work one night, at like six in the morning, covered in blood,” Lillard recalled.
At the time, Lillard said that he and his co-stars were busy discussing which projects they’d be turning to next, with Lillard saying that he had recently filmed a pilot that he expected would launch him into a career in the TV industry.
“And I’d literally just been on a pilot, and I’m like, ‘This movie’s lame. Nobody’s gonna see it. I’m going to go become a television star,’” Lillard said of Scream.
As it happened, however, the pilot Lillard starred in ultimately came to nothing, while Scream itself has continued to achieve further levels of success over three decades later.
“That pilot never went, and here we are 30 years later,” Lillard said, mentioning that “nobody could have possibly ever imagined” what the franchise would become.
Released in 1996, Scream famously follows a group of high school friends stalked by the masked, horror movie-obsessed serial killer, Ghostface. Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox, the series has spanned six sequels, the latest of which, Scream 7, arrived earlier this year.