Who wants a whodunit mystery with Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc investigating Ghostface in a Scream movie? Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson seems to have an idea. Johnson recently tweeted "Scream 8: A Benoit Blanc Mystery" with the "8" referencing the joke in Scream (2022) aimed at him. WARNING: Spoilers for Scream are in this story.The controversial director helmed the seventh installment in the Star Wars franchise, which ended up creating a huge divide between critics and fans. Johnson even received death threats from enraged fans who weren’t happy with the way fan-favorite characters were depicted in The Last Jedi. As a result, Rian Johnson has become synonymous with the term "toxic fandom."The recently released meta-horror movie Scream mocked The Last Jedi controversy and mentioned Johnson as "the Knives Out guy." In Scream, Johnson is said to have directed the very polarizing eighth entry in the fictional film-within-a-film franchise, Stab. The movie was not received well by Stab fans and eventually inspired two of them to don the Ghostface attire and make their own real-life slasher movie.
Scream directors even wanted Johnson to cameo in the movie, but his busy schedule didn’t allow it. "We reached out and wanted to do a fake, ET/Extra press junket thing with him. He was off making Knives Out 2. So he had bigger fish to fry than our Scream sequel," Tyler Gillett told Variety last month.
Rian Johnson is currently busy with the post-production on Knives Out 2. Knives Out is considered one of the best movies of 2019 and somewhat redeemed Rian Johnson in the pop culture world. The film grossed over $300 million worldwide and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Subsequently, Netflix acquired the rights to two sequels for a whopping $469 million. Knives Out 2 is due to come out later this year.
Ghostface Will Return In Scream 6
Scream 6 has been greenlit at Paramount Pictures with the team behind Scream returning. The film will shoot this summer and could come out as early as Halloween 2023. Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt are on board as writers, with duo Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin directing. Franchise newcomers Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega are expected to return alongside Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox. Hopefully, they won’t suffer the same fate as David Arquette’s iconic character, Dewey Riley, who was shockingly killed off in Scream (2022).
While it seems unlikely that the scenario of Rian Johnson helming a Scream movie will ever play out, we can’t be certain nowadays. Last year we got to see three Spider-Men swinging together in a live-action movie, and Doctor Strange 2 is rumored to include Tom Cruise as Iron Man. Scream (2022) is the fifth movie in Wes Craven’s titular franchise, and who knows what could happen by the time Scream 8 comes out? And Daniel Craig’s oddball detective, Benoit Blanc, investigating a Ghostface murder spree isn’t that bad of an idea.