Scream of the crop: How the slasher movie came to TV
Jill Blotevogel, creator and executive producer of the TV version of Scream, tells Michael Pickard how she brought the iconic horror franchise to the small screen. When Scream was released in 1996, it slayed audiences with its mix of scares, gory killings, sense of humour and its awareness of classic horror movie tropes. The film was credited with revitalising the horror film genre and – like other classics before it, such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street – it spawned several sequels, most recently with Scream 4 in 2011. Now the film franchise is winning new fans after being adapted for the small screen. US cable network MTV greenlit a pilot in April 2013 and, produced by The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films, it was subsequently ordered to series in October last year. The show, which had earlier been teased online after the first eight minutes of the pilot were released, debuted in the US on June 30 this year. The cast includes Willa Fitzgerald, Amadeus Serafini, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Carlson Young, Connor Weil and John Karna. Scream’s creator and executive producer Jill Blotevogel, whose credits include CBS murder-mystery Harper’s Island, was brought to the project to write the pilot script and she says Scream is part of a renaissance currently being experienced in TV at the expense of the movie industry. “It’s a great time to be a writer in Hollywood,” she says. “Features have really become polarised. They only do a few big tentpole movies and … Continue reading Scream of the crop: How the slasher movie came to TV
