After the success of Wes Craven’s Scream in December 1996, the studio wanted more, and they wanted more fast. Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson were asked to release a sequel in December 1997, which demanded an extremely quick writing and production process. Given that lightning-fast turnaround, while chatting with Williamson for the 25th anniversary of Scream 2, Collider's Perri Nemiroff was curious about who or what changed the most along the way. While discussing how the film's ending evolved, Williamson recalled specific changes he was asked to make to the character of Cotton Weary. Not only did Williamson push back on those changes, but so did Liev Schreiber himself.
In the original movie, the catalyst for the entire Scream franchise began with a scapegoat. Cotton Weary was framed by Sidney Prescott’s (Neve Campbell) boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), and friend, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), for the murder of Sidney’s mother, Maureen, who Cotton was secretly involved with. With Sidney as an eyewitness, Cotton was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, and spent at least a year behind bars before being exonerated of the crime.
With the movie becoming such a hit, the studio immediately wanted to cash in on a sequel. Because of the timeframe that Williamson was given, and because he was simultaneously writing for the hit series, Dawson’s Creek, the writer said working on the script for Scream 2 “was a nightmare. That whole year was a blur.” And that's without even considering the mayhem of the script leaks. According to Williamson, much of what he originally wrote was being altered during production, explaining:
"The ending changed a lot. We changed the dialogue, the motives, all those speeches. I remember sitting in the theater with Laurie Metcalf, and we were going over how to say what she was gonna say. And I remember, Liev Schreiber — oh, the library scene! Where he had a big speech, and he accosted her in the stairwell, that changed a lot. I must have written that scene 20 times."
Williamson is referring to the scene in Scream 2 where Cotton is especially desperate to clear all suspicion and establish his newly innocent persona in the media. In order to do this, he believes he needs Sidney’s participation. While attempting to recruit Sidney for a joint Diane Sawyer interview, Cotton comes off as quite sinister and puts yet another target on his back as a potential killer. Even though that particular scene certainly gets the job done, Williamson recalled a studio suggestion to go even further in selling Cotton as a red herring. Here's how he put it:
"I wanted the ending where Sidney throws it to Cotton at the end and lets him be the hero. All he wanted to do was to be exonerated and so all the press went to him, and I wanted that moment at the end because I thought it was very heroic of Sidney to do that, and winning for her, and also good for him. I think there was some conversation, the studio wanted it one way, and they wanted him to be much more of a villain and be much more of a red herring so that he was the killer … and I’m like, ‘You’re gonna think it anyway. Just the fact that he’s standing there, you’re gonna think that he could be a potential killer.’ So that speech got rewritten and rewritten, and finally, Liev put his foot down and said, ‘This is the way I want to say,’ and he was right, and he won."
It was a long journey to innocence for Cotton, all to amount to that opening scene of Scream 3. As the franchise is wont to do, the third film opens with a couple of kills, and the redeemed Cotton is the shock-factor fodder for that entry. When asked if Williamson thought there was more to mine in the character, he said, "Yes, that wasn't my wish."
Such is life (and death) in the wild Woodsboro legacy. Who knows, maybe a relative of Cotton's is out for revenge on the daughter of Billy Loomis in Scream VI? We'll find out when Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown and more head to New York on March 10, 2023.