Spyglass Media’s and Paramount’s Scream 7 is on track to clear $60 million domestically in its opening weekend, pulling in $28.8 million on Thursday and Friday.  It’s another win for Paramount-Skydance this week after news came out that Netflix is set to back out of their attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, leaving the path wide open for CEO David Ellison.

Even with the massively negative reactions from critics, Scream 7 is set to have the biggest opening of the year.  The film brings back franchise original Neve Campbell, but major controversy around a Israel-Gaza social media post made by Melissa Barrera led to her being fired by the studio.  Skyglass released a statement labeling the post as antisemetic, leading to the film going through major rewrites and production being uprooted, which also caused Jenna Ortega to depart from the film.  Barrera played Sam Carpenter, the daughter of Billy Loomis, who first appeared as Ghost Face in the franchise’s original film.  Ortega portrayed Tara Carpenter, Sam’s younger sister.  The film also underwent issues behind the camera, as original director Christopher Landon exited the project amidst the controversy.  He was replaced by Kevin Williamson, who penned the scripts for the original Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4.

While audiences have expressed enjoyment of the film, the film has been met with primarily negative reviews from critics.  The discrepancy between the Rotten Tomatoes audience score and critics score is the largest of the franchise, with the critics score the lowest in the history of the franchise at 34%.  The audience score is far higher at 78%.  Regardless, the film is still off to a huge start as Paramount projections were estimating an opening around $40 million.  The film is now in great shape to break $80 million globally for the weekend, even currently taking up all premium screens across 3,540 North American movie theaters.

Stay tuned with us at MXDWN through the weekend as we continue to cover Scream 7’s opening at the box office.