Scream is one of the most popular horror franchises of all time, and Scream: The TV Series was an underrated reboot that deserves way more love. With Scream first released in 1996, the franchise has endured for nearly three decades, poking fun at horror genre trends while still being effective scary movies in their own right. Each movie in the Scream timeline builds upon what came before, making it enjoyable to see the story play out across decades and generations.

Now that Scream 7 is set to be released on February 27, 2026, the franchise looks to come full circle as a number of characters from the past return to the series, including Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher. While it is exciting to see beloved characters return, those who want to experience another side of the Scream franchise should look towards Scream: The TV Series. It’s a fresh take on the long-running series and deserves its place alongside the rest of the franchise.

Scream: The TV Series Reimagined The Slasher Franchise For Television

The Show Successfully Used The Scream Formula To Craft An Enjoyable Series

Following the relative financial disappointment of Scream 4 in 2011, the Scream series went in an entirely different direction in the mid-2010s as MTV premiered Scream: The TV Series on June 30, 2015. It was a brand-new take on the existing IP, forgoing the long-running narrative that had played out over the course of four films, having an entirely new story with a cast of fresh faces. Though critics weren’t incredibly receptive to it right away, Scream: The TV series built upon what worked and ended up running for three seasons, ending in 2019.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Scream: The TV Series is how it was able to take the successful “whodunit” formula of the movies and translate it into a TV show that was able to sustain itself for multiple seasons. The show utilized a lot of the franchise’s iconic tropes, with the meta-humor being one of the main series’ biggest strengths. It was an admirable attempt at moving the Scream franchise, which felt like it had run its course at the time, to a new medium that could tell new stories.

How The Scream TV Show Compares To The Original Movies (Are They Connected?)

Scream Is A Worthy (Albeit Unconnected) Addition To The Franchise

Few slasher films can match up to how great the original Scream film is, and while there are no outright bad films in the franchise, most would probably agree that none of them quite reach the same level as the iconic 1996 movie.

Despite that, there is a lot to love about the other five films, as well as the TV series, which attempted to take the franchise in a brand-new direction. As a result, the move from movies to television allowed characters to be more fleshed out than ever, though the show loses some of the snappy pacing that Wes Craven’s original film does so well.

A lot of successful movie franchises tend to branch out into numerous spin-offs, including TV shows, with most of them being canon to the main installment. That isn’t the case for Scream: The TV Series, as it is entirely its own thing. There are no connections to Sidney Prescott, Billy Loomis, any other character, or any of the films throughout the show’s three seasons. It was a bold move by the franchise, but it turned out to be the right decision from a creative standpoint, as it allowed for more freedom to explore its own mythos.

Don’t Expect Scream: The TV Series To Be Like The Modern Scream Movies

Scream: The TV Series Was A New Take On The Existing Franchise

While it shares the same name as the rest of the franchise, fans of the movies shouldn’t expect Scream: The TV series to be like them, especially when it comes to the modern “rebooted” films. While Scream (2022) and Scream 6 were incredible successes, they relied heavily on the original four Wes Craven films, building out their own narrative from what came before, especially the first Scream movie. With Scream 7 bringing back several more characters from past installments, the franchise seems content to keep the nostalgia flowing.

Related

10 Actors You Forgot Were In The Scream Movies

The Scream franchise is full of well-known and prolific actors that are often easy to forget, with many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos.

That’s what is so admirable about Scream: The TV Series: it opted to do its own thing, choosing to tell a brand-new story that borrowed from the franchise’s formula instead of living in its shadow. Even Ghostface’s mask through the first two seasons of the series was a new take on the iconography of what came before. Though Scream: The TV Series isn’t connected to the rest of the movies, it is a must-watch for fans of the franchise, as it successfully adapts the Scream formula to the television medium.

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  Scream: The TV Series

  Release Date

  2015 – 2019-00-00

  Network

  MTV, VH1

  Directors

  Dennis Widmyer, Brian Dannelly, Jamie Travis, Kevin Kolsch, Rodman Flender, Tanya Hamilton, Tim Hunter, Darren Grant, Daniel Stamm, Oz Scott, E.L. Katz, Scott Speer, Ti West, Leigh Janiak

  Writers

  Meredith Glynn, Erin Maher, Jill E. Blotevogel, Kay Reindl, Jordan Rosenberg, Steve Yockey, Jaime Paglia, Brian Sieve, Michael Gans, Richard Register, Anna Christopher, David Coggeshall, Heath Corson, Penny Cox, Sherman Payne

  
  

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    Willa Fitzgerald

    Emma Duvall

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  Movie(s)

  Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4, Scream 5, Scream 6, Scream 7

  Created by

  Wes Craven, Kevin Williamson

  First Film

  Scream

  Latest Film

  Scream 6

  Upcoming Films

  Scream 7

  Cast

  Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Liev Schreiber, Heather Matarazzo, Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Roger Jackson

  Created by Kevin Williamson and originally helmed by Wes Craven, the Scream franchise takes a meta approach to the slasher horror franchise, centering on teenagers well-versed in the genre who find themselves hunted and killed by figures donning the Ghostface mask. The first four movies revolved around Neve Campbell’s Sydney Prescott as she frequently found herself the target of different Ghostface killers, while the fifth and sixth installments introduced new protagonists, sisters Tara and Sam, with their own dark past connected to the original Ghostface killer.