Skeet Ulrich was supposed to have a three-film arc in the Scream franchise, but that all changed when Melissa Barrera was fired over her pro-Palestine views.

Ulrich, who was one of the OG Ghostfaces in the thriller, reprised his role in the fifth and sixth installments as a hallucination to his daughter, Sam Loomis, played by Barrera. When Barrera was dropped from Scream 7, the film was retooled and did so without Ulrich and Barrera’s characters.

“Without Melissa Barrera and Sam Loomis, there’s no Billy Loomis,” Ulrich said in an interview with Us Weekly. “He was in her head. They had their chance at it and didn’t quite get to complete the three-film arc that they talked to me about.”

Scream 7 was retooled after Spyglass fired Melissa Barrera in November 2023 after she expressed support for Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war. The production company behind the film said in a statement that they had “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form” and dropped her.

Matthew Lillard recently expressed being “embarrassed” for having returned to the Scream franchise following Barrera’s firing.

Barrera also recently revealed that she would be open to returning to the franchise, but only if Spyglass was not involved.

“Not with the company that currently holds the rights,” she said on JustWatch. “I love the franchise. I had an amazing time making those movies. But a lot of the hate and the difficulty that I’ve faced in the last years is because the leadership of that company made it a point to label me something that I’m not, and they never apologized, even when I was proven right.”

Barrera continued, “Even with an apology, I wouldn’t go back to work with them. So, not that I’m holding my breath. I don’t think they have that ability. But if the franchise were ever to leave those hands and go into hands that I think honor Wes Craven’s legacy more, I think yeah.”

Ben Shapiro has officially responded to the recent shutdown of production on his immigration-themed Daily Wire movie Pawn Shop, which is now back in production in Livingston, Montana.

In an appearance on his podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, Shapiro said, “Let us be clear: there’s only one reason the city commissioners ruled they were going to stop our production on the street: politics, pure and simple, and they pretty much admitted it. One commissioner named Cindy Daniels said, quote, ‘I’m not willing to sacrifice the resources of the safety, the security of the mental health of our community. Absolutely not. This wasn’t a Hallmark film. This wasn’t, you know, Christmastime in Livingston, and it wasn’t a romantic story.’”

To that assertion, Shapiro replied, “Well, I mean, I wasn’t aware that we had to fulfill your idea of what the story required. In fact, I’m fairly certain the First Amendment says precisely the opposite of that… That is content discrimination openly performed and a violation of the First Amendment.”

The conservative political commentator later said: “These people are not even hiding the ball. These censorious jackasses just want things they do not like barred by law. It is that simple. They don’t give a sh*t about free speech. They don’t like free speech. Free speech is just for them. It is not for the people who oppose them.”

Alluding to “made up stories” regarding his production “from a bunch of left-wing protesters,” Shapiro said that the more they’re entertained, “the more justified our mission proves itself to be. We are obviously right over the target. When you try to shout us down, you only make us more powerful. Your antics are not going to work. The film will be completed and it will be released and it will be highly successful. We call those feathers in our cap. Trophies over our mantle.”

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