Christopher Landon, director of Scream 7, addressed Melissa Barrera’s firing from the film in a social media post. Landon wrote, “This is my statement: Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make.” The post has since been deleted, and Landon has not said anything more regarding this situation.

Spyglass hired Landon to direct the newest film in the franchise. Landon is no stranger to horror movies, as he previously led Happy Death Day in 2017. 

Landon talked about directing the movie, “It came out of the blue for me. My understanding is that there were conversations happening for some time. But I think it was just an opportunity that really arose because the other directors who did the last two films, Tyler and Matt, they wanted to do something else. They were ready to kind of do something different. That’s when they obviously had to find someone new, and I’ve known Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original film, for a long, long time and he’s a friend. I think he threw my name into the hat and everybody kind of said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense. That seems to make sense.’ And I was just thrilled that I got that call because it felt very, it felt like kismet, it felt like a thing that like was always meant to be.”

Barrera, who played the lead role of Sam in the newest Scream, was fired from the Scream 7 movie following her social media posts surrounding the Israel-Hamas War. 

In one Instagram story, Barreras wrote, “Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp. Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity, no water… People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.” 

The studio producing the Scream films, Spyglass, also released a statement in response to the situation: “We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion, or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”