When Scream 3 slashed its way into theaters in 2000, it was supposed to be the grand finale. Three years after Scream 2 and four after the original, Wes Craven’s trilogy capper brought back Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott and promised to tie a bloody bow on Ghostface’s reign of terror. What we got instead was… Roman Bridger. Yes, Sidney’s secret half-brother, a Hollywood director, a guy who could apparently hack together voice-changing supercomputers, orchestrate his own mother’s murder, manipulate Billy and Stu into their killing spree, and, of course, stop his own heartbeat so Sheriff Dewey couldn’t tell he was alive. If that sounds like a soap opera villain crossed with a Marvel supervillain, you’re not wrong.
The problem wasn’t Craven’s direction or the cast (all of whom brought their A-game). It was the script. For the first time, Kevin Williamson wasn’t the one behind the typewriter. Instead, Ehren Kruger took over, and while he wrapped up Sidney’s story with finality, the whole half-brother twist felt like a stretch even by slasher standards. Fans have forgiven plenty of Ghostface motivations over the years (jealous cousins, revenge-seeking mothers, unhinged superfans), but Roman Bridger? That’s still a tough sell.
But, now 25 years later, according to Josh Pais, who played Detective Wallace, even Wes Craven didn’t know how the movie would end while they were filming it. Speaking on the Reel Appreciation podcast with Maria Elizabeth Darnell and David Clair-Bennett, Pais revealed: “As we were filming, Wes didn’t know exactly who the killer was or how it was going to unfold. And so we would have these meetings before certain days of filming and going like could it be this, could it be that? Do we want to lead the audience here, lead them there? And he literally didn’t know the ending. And so it just—that also kept all of us on our toes.”
That explains a lot, doesn’t it? If the director himself was playing a real-life game of Clue during production, no wonder the finished film feels so scattered.
For Pais, the experience was unforgettable for other reasons. He’d just worked with Craven on the 1999 Meryl Streep drama Music of the Heart, and when it wrapped, Craven invited him onto Scream 3. “It was just like this beautiful heartfelt movie,” Pais said of Music of the Heart. “And then as soon as we were wrapping that, he said, ‘I want you to be in Scream 3.’ And I was like, ‘Awesome.’”
Walking onto the set as a Scream fan himself was surreal. “It was just bizarre,” Pais recalled. “It took me a day to be like, ‘Okay, I’m a character. This is real.’ Everybody was just so playful. Even though it was a scary movie, the amount of fun we all had was just insane.”
So while horror audiences might groan at Roman’s Scooby-Doo-level master plan, the people making Scream 3 were having the time of their lives. And now, thanks to Pais, we know the secret: Wes Craven didn’t have an ending locked in when the cameras rolled. That makes the chaotic finale feel a little less like a mistake and a little more like a dare.
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