[TV] Kevin Williamson Explains How Rejected Scream 3 Script Became The Following Posted by Joseph Lee on 01.22.2013
A lot of ideas started in his script...
Entertainment Tonight spoke with Kevin Williamson about his script for The Following, which started as a script for Scream 3.
The show premiered last night and is Williamson's sixth television series. It stars Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy.
While at the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, California, Williamson said: "Back when I was researching Danny Rolling [known as The Gainesville Ripper; in 1990 he murdered five students in Florida and later served as the inspiration for Scream], I wanted to write about a serial killer on a college campus, and an FBI agent hunting down a college professor. But then I decided to do Scream. Interestingly enough, Scream 2 was on a college campus, so it all connected."
The series sees Bacon's former FBI agent hunting a serial killer named Joe Carroll, played by Purefoy. The idea originated as an abandoned script for Scream 3.
He said: "In my original story for Scream 3 [Ehren Kruger was brought in to write the threequel after Williamson exited], the killers were basically a fanclub of Woodsboro kids that had formed because of Stab 1 and Stab 2. They were all doing the killings and the big surprise of the movie was when Sidney walked into the house after Ghostface had killed everyone ... and they all rose up. None of them were actually dead and they'd planned the whole thing."
There are also some similarities to Emma Roberts' character in Scream 4. Williamson added: "The motive was their quest for fame, so I just placed that into one character with Scream 4. They were trying to top [Sidney's] Woodsboro story so they could be the legacy of their hometown. All those ideas metamorphosed into The Following."
The pilot of The Following will repeat on FOX this Friday.
