Last night, the LA Film Fest presented a bloody and gruesomely entertaining sneak peak of MTV’s newest series Scream. The series is a revamped adaptation of the ’90s horror flick with a young and glamorous teenage cast. Film Independent Curator Elvis Mitchell welcomed the producers Jaime Paglia and Liz Gately and well as actors Bella Thorne, Tom Maden, Amadeus Serafini, Carlson Young, John Karna, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Willa Fitzgerald, Tracy Middendorf and Connor Weil.

Most of the cast admitted they had never seen Wes Craven’s original Scream, and some of them didn’t even realize they were auditioning for the horror franchise until they got the part. Connor Weil, who plays the handsome jock boyfriend lead, confessed that he is terrified of horror films. “It’s bad for my health to watch scary movies—I won’t sleep for a week.”

Paglia talked about the shift from big to small screen. “The genre does not lend itself that easily to TV as a slasher movie. That’s why we integrated a meta element that was telling the audience that this is going to be different. This is going to be more Friday Night Lights. We have a story from the past as well as the present, except we won’t get the answers in 90 minutes. We are winking at the audience, saying we know what you are expecting, but come along for the ride. It’s different with television because we are going to have people die, but we want it to really matter. When someone does die, it hurts. We have to have the ability to delve into the characters and become invested in the soap opera aspect so the show can live off that alone; and then we have the horror and the murder on top of that.”

“When I saw the original Scream, I realized this movie succeeded in so many levels,” Gately elaborated. “It was entertaining as a comedy as a horror film, as a self-referential story. And it had great characters that you immediately bonded with. It felt like the roots of a TV series were right there. To be able to spend more time with those characters and open that world felt like a natural extension.”

Lorena Alvarado / Film Independent Blogger