Ghostface Targets Sidney’s Daughter As Franchise Legends Return

The Scream 7 trailer has offered a closer look at Ghostface’s triumphant return to the big screen. The upcoming Scream 7 is the latest installment in the long-running meta slasher franchise. Directed by Kevin Williamson (the screenwriter of the original movie), the horror sequel features the return of Neve Campbell as longtime franchise final girl Sidney Prescott, after the actor sat out 2023’s Scream VI over a pay dispute.

Paramount Pictures has now unveiled the first official trailer for Scream 7. The trailer opens with what seems like it could be the opening sequence of the movie, when a couple (played by Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph) stays in Stu Macher’s house from the original movie, which has now been converted into a Ghostface-themed B&B, presumably after being vacated by the Freeman family, who resided there as of 2022’s Scream.

The story proper then picks up with Sidney getting a call from Ghostface from a phone number with a Woodsboro area code. The killer reveals that they have discovered where Sidney is hiding out, in Texas. The killer then says that it”reminds me of where we grew up.”

Ghostface then threatens Sidney’s teenage daughterTatum (Isabel May), who is named after her late friend from the original movie, Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan). After Ghostface taunts Sidney by saying, “I’m not hiding… Not this time,” the killer attacks Sidney and Tatum in their home. Tatum then addresses her mother, saying, “I want to be a fighter like you.”

The trailer then reveals brief clips showcasing the return of Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), as well as those of Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown).

Among the barrage of Ghostface clips towards the end, there is a shot of the killer walking away from Stu Macher’s house, on fire, an extended scene of Sidney using a remote viewing app to help her daughter shoot Ghostface through a walland what seems to be the death of Sidney’s husband Mark (Joel McHale).

Watch the full trailer below:

The first official poster for Scream 7 has also been revealed on the official Scream X account. The image features the return of Ghostface, with Stu’s burning house reflected in the killer’s knife. See the poster below:

So far, the trailer has not revealed any of the supposedly dead characters whose actors will be returning in the Scream 7 cast, including Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and the former Ghostface killers Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Roman Bridger (Scott Foley). Because the production is still keeping that information under wraps, it stands to reason that not everything is as it seems in the trailer.

There is still a great deal of information to be gleaned from the trailer, which reveals that Sidney is working for a company called The Little Latte Coffee Co. and provides her daughter’s name for the first time.

However, the implication that the Ghostface killer grew up with Sidney in Woodsboro could be a misdirectiondesigned to point viewers towards the longtime fan theory that Stu Macher will be returning as the killer in Scream 7.

So far, the killers in each of the Scream movies have been different from the ones that came before. The fact that this trailer seems to reveal the opening sequence and the death of Sidney’s husband, but is still eliding those other elements of the story, could mean that there is a lot more context being hidden that will ultimately be revealed when the movie is released on February 27, 2026.

While it is possible that Stu or Roman could be behind the mask Scream 7their deaths having been retconned, it is also possible that the returning characters will appear only as hallucinationsin the same manner that Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) did in Scream VI and 2022’s Scream.

The repeated tease of Stu’s burning house would seem to indicate that Scream 7 is taking a scorched-earth approach to the legacy of the franchise, which would not necessarily square with two major legacy killers returning to hunt Sidney down yet again, thus endangering the franchise’s status as a series of thrilling whodunits.