In fall 2023, Jenna Ortega left the Scream franchise behind apparently over schedule conflicts with Wednesday season 2. The word about Ortega’s departure broke shortly after her on-screen sister, Melissa Barrera, was fired from Scream 7 over comments she made about the war in Gaza. There was a separate report that Ortega left Scream 7 over a salary dispute. Now, Ortega is sharing her reasons why she won’t be back as Tara Carpenter after playing the role in the last two Scream movies.
“It had nothing to do with pay or scheduling,” said Ortega during an interview with The Cut. “The Melissa stuff was happening, and it was all kind of falling apart… If Scream 7 wasn’t going to be with that team of directors and those people I fell in love with, then it didn’t seem like the right move for me in my career at the time.”
Radio Silence’s Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin had previously dropped out as the directors of Scream 7 before Barrera was fired. Their replacement, Christopher Landon, also left the film after Ortega and Barrera were out of the project. In their place, Kevin Williamson — the original screenwriter of Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4 — was named as the new director of Scream 7.
Neve Campbell, who refused to appear in Scream 6 over her own salary dispute, will once again headline Scream 7 as Sydney Prescott. 1883 star Isabel May will play Sydney’s daughter in the film. Courtney Cox will also reprise her role as Gale Weathers. who along with Sydney are the only remaining survivors from the first film.
Scream 7 will hit theaters on February 27, 2026.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.