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There is a new wrinkle to the Scream story. Just a day after :a[Melissa Barrera was let go from the stabby franchise]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/melissa-barrera-dropped-from-next-scream-film-over-social-media-posts-on-israel-hamas-conflict/' } over what were considered controversial social media posts, word arrives that her co-star (and possibly the biggest draw of the movies currently) Jenna Ortega also won't be returning. Her absence, however, is being put down to scheduling reasons.

According to a story in Deadline, it all has to do with how busy Ortega's work calendar has become because of the actors' strike. The report mentions discussions about Ortega having to skip the movie being held even before the strike kicked in.

Not only does she have to finish shooting the last few days on Beetlejuice 2, but she'll be spending a chunk of next year in Ireland filming the second season of Wednesday. Why wouldn't the Scream...

Melissa Barrera is no longer starring in Scream VII.

The 33-year-old actress, who played Samantha Carpenter in the series, was dropped from the film after a series of social media posts about the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to THR.

Keep reading to find out more…Variety also reported the news, adding that the firing was “due to her social media posts that referred to Israel as a ‘colonized’ land and floated an antisemitic trope that Jews control the media.”

“Western media only shows the [Israeli] side. Why do they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself,” she wrote in one post.

TheWrap also reports that it was “not due to the actress’s vocal online support for Palestine or for calling for a ceasefire (a position supported by 68% of Americans) amid the ongoing Gaza conflict but due to Berrera posting social media content that allegedly crossed the line into antisemitism.

Melissa Barrera is stepping back into the world of Radio Silence, the filmmakers who directed her in Scream (2022) and Scream VI. The actor will star in Radio Silence’s upcoming monster thriller for Universal, which was just announced earlier this week.

Details are wrapped up as tight as a mummy, but it is described as being akin to The Invisible Man and this week’s Renfield in that it will re-imagine one of Universal’s classic monsters. The title for the new project was at one point Dracula’s Daughter, which centered on a group of kidnappers who abduct a group of young people, among them, Dracula’s daughter.

Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will direct, with the filmmaking collective’s Chad Villella producing with William Sherak, Paul Neinstein and James Vanderbilt at Project X Entertainment. Stephen Sheilds penned the script with Guy Busick revising a draft.

Exclusive: Following the success of the recent Scream films, Melissa Barrera is looking to reteam with some familiar faces as sources tell Deadline Barrera is set to join Radio Silence’s Untitled Monster Thriller at Universal.

Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, who directed the recent Scream pics she starred in, will helm the project with Scream producer Chad Villella serving as producer alongside William Sherak, Paul Neinstein and James Vanderbilt at Project X Entertainment. The script was written by Stephen Shields, with revisions by Guy Busick.

Tripp Vinson will produce as well with Radio Silence and Project X, who are recently coming off the huge success of Scream VI that Bettinelli-Olpin & Gillett directed, Project X produced and Radio Silence’s Villella executive produced. Co-written by Project X’s Vanderbilt, the film set a franchise record opening at the global box office and grossed $67.1 million globally. The teams also...

Alec Bojalad Jul 11, 2019

Amazon Studios will adapt Brian K. Vaughan's comic Paper Girls into a TV series.

Earlier this year, prolific comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan struck a deal with Legendary Entertainment to adapt some of his comic IP. Now the first project from that deal has been announced.

According to Deadline, Brian K. Vaughan, Legendary, and Plan B (the studio behind Moonlight) have a deal in place with Amazon Studios to adapt his time traveling adventure story Paper Girls. Amazon Studios is the studio arm behind Amazon Prime and it's safe to assume that means the Paper Girls TV series is destined for Jeff Bezos's streaming giant.

Toy Story 4 co-writer Stephany Folsom will write the adaptation of Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's comic and will also produce the project alongside Vaughan and Plan B. Folsom has a relationship with Amazon already as she is part...

Above: Polish poster for The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria, 1965). Designer: Jerzy Flisak.As the 55th New York Film Festival winds down this weekend, I thought I’d look back half a century at the films of the 5th edition. That 1967 festival, programmed by Amos Vogel, Richard Roud, Arthur Knight, Andrew Sarris and Susan Sontag, featured 21 new films, all but three of which were from Europe (six of them from France, 2 and 1/7 of them directed by Godard), all of which showed at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall. (They also programmed Gance’s Napoleon, Mamoulian’s Applause and King Vidor’s Show People in the retrospective slots). The only director to have a film in both the 1967 festival and the 2017 edition is Agnès Varda, who was one of the directors of the omnibus Far From Vietnam and was then already 12 years into her filmmaking career.It will come as...

The 73rd Venice International Film Festival will award its Golden Lion awards for lifetime achievement to French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski.

The festival noted that it plans to start awarding two Golden Lions for career achievement at each edition of the festival, starting this year. One will be to a director and one to an actor.

Belmondo is well known for films such as Breathless, Pierrot le Fou (which competed in Venice in 1965), Hit Man, That Man From Rio and The Professional.

Venice festival director Alberto Barbera said: “Thanks to his fascinating face, irresistible charm and extraordinary versatility, he has played roles in dramas, adventure movies and even comedies, making him a star who is universally respected, by engagé directors and escapist cinema alike.”

Skolimowski has enjoyed a 50-year career including his early Polish trilogy of Rysopis, Walkover and Barrier; The Departure; Deep End; The Shout; Moonlighting and Essential Killing (which won a special...

Welcome to the first Notebook Soundtrack Mix—Hyper Sleep! A word about the mix: There's no thematic thread through this collection, it's a variety of intriguing music. In making soundtrack mixes, I'm drawn to the subjective qualities of association and meaning that arise from experiencing the musical narratives that result from transitions and combinations of tracks in succession. Though there are several favorite films, Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill, for one, individual pieces are chosen simply for the music. I haven't seen some of the films. Robert Drasnin, Vladimir Cosma and Antoine Duhamel are represented with curious French T.V. work, rather than with some of their more well known output (The Kremlin Letter, Diva and Pierrot le fou, respectively.) Maybe this is the first of a series…I have several ideas for themed mixes, but wanted to start this way, including work that reflects jazz, classical, experimental and pop influences.

Skolimowski at work, from the December 1968 issue of Films and Filming,

via chained and perfumed.

Jerzy Skolimowski's comeback as a director after a break of nearly two decades threw many for a loop. The year was 2008, the venue was Cannes and the film was Four Nights with Anna. "Wait, what is this, exactly?" asked Daniel Kasman here in The Notebook. The answer Patrick Z McGavin settled on: "a small but crucial movie," and Skolimowski would follow it up with Essential Killing, which provoked far more resolute reactions, both positive and negative, when it premiered last fall in Venice.

Last month, Deep End (1970) emerged from legal limbo and, restored, it's currently touring the UK and sees a release on DVD in July. Now the full-blown retrospective The Cinema of Jerzy Skolimowski is on at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York through July 3 and, in Los Angeles, Cinefamily...