There's a 'Scream 5' Scene That Saved Dewey's Life Until They Deleted It

Scream is one of those franchises I go back to time and time again because I love the characters so very much.

And I was devastated when they killed off Dewey Riley (David Arquette) a few years ago. Dewey had survived so much! He had spent 25 years surviving things like severed spines, gut stabs, and huge falls.

Yet all that luck ran out in the 2022 Scream, which was really Scream 5.

Ghostface finally got Dewey in that hospital corridor, and a little bit of the sunshine left the slasher universe. But according to Collider, that sunshine almost returned.

The filmmakers felt the same way, and even scripted a scene where they could bring him back if they needed to.

So what happened?

Scream (2022) - Dewey Dies Scene (6/10) | Movieclipswww.youtube.com

The "Safety Shot"

Scream is one of the most successful horror franchises ever. And when you get that successful, you need legacy characters to carry over into the next films. But the franchise has always lived and died on who lives and who...dies.

The trio of Sidney, Gale, and Dewey was really the only one left when it came time for the soft reboot in 2022.

Killing one of them made the studio Spyglass Media Group incredibly nervous. I mean...there was definitely going to be backlash.

So they had directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (known as Radio Silence) film an alternate scene where Dewey survives his injuries and is okay!

There was a precedent for it; Dewey had survived so very much over the years, but the directors were committed to the creative weight of Dewey’s sacrifice. They knew that it was the emotional core of the movie and the hook for the third act.

In order to make the studio happy and to make sure they got their way, they filmed what they called a "terrible" safety shot.

It was an over-the-shoulder shot from behind Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), showing only a doctor’s legs with the intention of using voiceover on top, with the doctor announcing that Dewey had woken up from surgery and was going to be fine.

Co-director Tyler Gillett admitted they filmed it "with no intention of ever f*cking using it," while Matt Bettinelli-Olpin noted that calling it a "shot" was being "very generous."

This was a pretty smart way to get it done, even if it took Dewey from us.

Hilariously, Wes Craven originally intended for Dewey to die in the 1996 film, but he liked Arquette’s performance so much that he filmed a last-minute shot of him being loaded into an ambulance. This became a running gag for the character until he eventually bit the dust.

Summing It All Up

If you are hired into a franchise, it's good to have a solid plan about how to shake things up and to stick to your vision.

I am sad we didn't get a DVD with this deleted scene or even a hint at it, but I guess when a franchise goes on this long, you have to make sacrifices to hand it off to the next generation.

Let me know what you think in the comments.