Three decades after the original film debuted in theaters, Scream is still slaying it at the box office, once again proving that if movie studios want to bankroll future projects and keep the lights on, they should make more horror. For the record, I mean real horror, not B-movie slop, though sometimes that can be fun. Modern horror fans, much to the shock of mainstream film fans, have developed a rather refined palette in recent years.
It’s no longer enough to mix nudity, blood, guts, and gore together in a pot and toss it in front of audiences. Horror fans today demand solid character development, plots that make sense, and films that have something to say. Granted, more often than not, that “something” pushes woke, liberal messaging, but not always. Horror has also given Christian filmmakers a platform to share their values and beliefs through solid storytelling, with Black Phone 2, The Conjuring, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose serving as prime examples.
The seventh film in the Scream franchise delivered a great opening weekend, pulling in a total of $64.1 million. That haul marked a much bigger win for Paramount—a studio run by Trump supporter David Ellison in partnership with his father, Larry Ellison, also a Trump fan—than the company originally anticipated. That reality partly explains why the story matters.
Paramount recently secured a deal to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, after beating out Netflix in an epically long bidding war. Netflix has earned a reputation for crafting woke slop based on data analysis of what executives think will bring in the most subscribers. In other words, the company prioritizes the bottom line over great storytelling, somehow failing to realize that the two typically go hand in hand.
With 2026 dragging tail at the box office, Scream 7 has now claimed the best debut of the year, knocking the animated film GOAT out of the top spot. The studio spent $45 million to make the film and received a huge boost from the return of Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott character. Campbell chose not to reprise her role in Scream VI, but a hefty $7 million payday convinced her to return for the latest installment.
With the Ellisons now controlling Paramount, conservatives should want to see the company succeed, especially when you look at the original content the studio is producing, much of which prominently features conservative themes. One example is Taylor Sheridan’s hit series Landman, starring Billy Bob Thornton. During the show’s second season, an episode featured the main character, Tommy Norris, launching into a rant about the liberal harpies on The View. Norris also delivers rambles that espouse truths many conservatives would nod along with.
In other words, the success of Scream 7 gives Paramount more money to invest in creators willing to take risks and present something other than woke garbage filled with token gay and transgender characters. This is how the culture war is won.
“For Josh Goldstine, president of global marketing and distribution at Paramount, the launch of Scream 7 signaled a new beginning for Paramount, which last year completed an $8 billion merger with David Ellison’s Skydance. Following that merger, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, co-chairs, took the reins of Paramount Pictures,” Breitbart News reported.
“This is the first time the new Paramount team has truly gotten its arms around a movie—not necessarily from the production side, but from the marketing and distribution side,” Goldstine explained. “It’s really an exciting time for the new Paramount.”
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