The Scream franchise is getting slaughtered, as Scream 7 will see neither Melissa Barrera nor Jenna Ortega returning, thereby losing the film’s main leads. Just one day after Spyglass fired Barrera for social media posts she wrote referring to the Israel-Hamas war, came news that Ortega would not be returning to the horror series.

Ortega reportedly informed Spyglass that she wouldn’t be returning prior to the actors strike, so the decision was unrelated to her co-star’s controversial firing.

Happy Death Day filmmaker Christopher Landon remains on board as director, for now. Landon takes over from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the filmmaking team known as Radio Silence, who rebooted the Scream franchise with 2022’s Scream and the most recent instalment, Scream VI, which released earlier this year. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have reportedly stepped back from the film series to focus on an original horror for Universal (that film doesn’t yet have a publicly released plot or synopsis, but rumours are that it will be an adaptation of Dracula’s Daughter) but Radio Silence – including Chad Villella – are staying on as executive producers.

“This is my statement: 💔 Everything sucks. Stop yelling,” filmmaker Landon wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, referring to Barrera’s firing from the project. “This was not my decision to make.” He later deleted the post.

Still, next steps for Scream 7 are unclear.