The latest installment to the Scream series, Scream 5, is scheduled to premiere on January 14, 2022. According to the film’s producer, Chad Villella, Scream 5 will be rated R.
Scream 5 to help satisfy the demand for more R-rated movies
Whether the current generation of moviegoers has been desensitized to violence and gore, or people are just more open-minded these days, the fact is that viewers are more attracted to R-rated movies today than ever before. Back then, having an R-rating all but guaranteed that the film would not make the studio as much money. Indeed, times have changed. These days, audiences want more rated R films. A good example of this is Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool movies. The R-18 films pulled in a combined total of more than $1.5 billion in the global box office, on a more modest budget of around $180 million in total. More recently, the Mortal Kombat reboot, another R-rated movie, grossed more than $80 million in a pandemic-stricken market. The impending Scream 5 sequel is looking to take advantage of this change in audiences’ tastes. To achieve this, it will bring back original cast members such as Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve Campbell.
Will Scream 5 bring life back to the Scream franchise?
The first Scream movie is an iconic film that reinvigorated interest in the slasher movie genre back in the 1990s. It was a runaway box office success that spawned three further sequels. The slasher films totaled more than $600 million in the box office on a combined $118 million budget. Perhaps, more importantly, the franchise proved that there was a market for R-rated films. With all four Scream films being R-rated, it only stands to reason that Scream 5 has the same rating. The only question now is how well it will do without Wes Craven. Scream 5 will mark the first time that Wes Craven will not direct a Scream film following his death in 2015. Instead, filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not), signed on to direct the fifth Scream installment, with Kevin Williamson returning as the film’s executive producer. As we’ve already mentioned, the original Scream film was iconic and influential. One of the reasons for this is how the film wasn’t afraid to use violence and gore to tell a good story. We doubt that audiences would have loved the original Scream films nearly as much if they had received a PG-13 classification. We can only hope that Scream 5 does Craven’s work justice. Otherwise, he might just have to come back from the grave to haunt everyone involved with Scream 5.
