Actress Jenna Ortega has left the ‘Scream 7’ film due to scheduling conflicts. The actress dropped out of the horror franchise due to her ‘Wednesday’ season 2 shooting schedule with Netflix, which was said to be in the works months ago before the SAG-AFTRA strike began.
Production dates for the upcoming season of ‘Wednesday’ are yet to be confirmed, reports Mirror.co.uk. Meanwhile, Jenna also needs to wrap filming on Tim Burton’s ‘Beetlejuice 2’, which has a few more days to shoot after it was interrupted by the SAG-AFTRA strike.
As per Mirror.co.uk, the news of her exit from ‘Scream 7’ comes as her co-star and Mexican actress Melissa Barrera was fired from the movie franchise, with her axing following on from posts she made relating to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and Gaza conflict.
Variety has confirmed that Jenna’s exit from Scream was not connected to Melissa’s dismissal. According to a new report, Spyglass Media Group has “dropped” Melissa from the cast of ‘Scream VII’, with them said to be “pushing back on a narrative that has quickly coalesced around the decision that Barrera was fired for showing support for the Palestinian cause.”
Melissa, 33, was cast as Sam Carpenter in August 2020 for the fifth ‘Scream’ film, with the film hitting screens in January 2022. She is also famous for having starred in the likes of In ‘The Heights’ and ‘Carmen’. She was supposed to be at the helm of the leading role for the next ‘Scream’ movie.
Ortega received a Comedy Series Actress Primetime Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe Comedy TV Actress nom for her turn as the title character of Wednesday.
The Scream franchise with a seventhquel stands to hit the $1 billion global mark at the box office. Through six films, it stands at $911M.
In response to Barrera being dropped from Scream VII, Spyglass issued the statement, ““Spyglass’ stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”
Christopher Landon, the new director on Scream 7, posted on X, and then removed the Tweet, “This is my statement: “Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make.”