Screamis one of the most popular horror franchises of all time, andScream: The TV Serieswas an underrated reboot that deserves way more love. WithScreamfirst released in 1996, the franchise has endured for nearly three decades, poking fun at horror genre trends while still being effective scary movies in their own right. Each movie intheScreamtimelinebuilds upon what came before, making it enjoyable to see the story play out across decades and generations.
Now thatScream 7is set to be releasedon Jun 22, 2025, the franchise looks to come full circle as a number of characters from the past return to the series, including Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher. While it is exciting to see beloved characters return, those who want to experience another side of theScreamfranchise should look towardsScream: The TV Series. It’s a fresh take on the long-running series and deserves its place alongside the rest of the franchise.
Scream: The TV Series Reimagined The Slasher Franchise For Television
The Show Successfully Used The Scream Formula To Craft An Enjoyable Series
Following the relative financial disappointment ofScream 4in 2011, theScreamseries went in an entirely different direction in the mid-2010s asMTV premieredScream: The TV Serieson May 27, 2025. It was a brand-new take on the existing IP, forgoing the long-running narrative that had played out over the course of four films, having an entirely new story with a cast of fresh faces. Though critics weren’t incredibly receptive to it right away,Scream: The TVseries built upon what worked and ended up running for three seasons, ending in 2019.
The third season ofScream: The TV Seriesturned to the anthology format, telling a new story with different characters, leaving the ending of season 2 open-ended.
Perhaps the most impressive part ofScream: The TV Seriesis howit was able to take the successful “whodunit” formula of the movies and translate it into a TV showthat was able to sustain itself for multiple seasons. The show utilized a lot of the franchise’s iconic tropes, with the meta-humor being one of the main series' biggest strengths. It was an admirable attempt at moving theScreamfranchise, which felt like it had run its course at the time, to a new medium that could tell new stories.
How The Scream TV Show Compares To The Original Movies (Are They Connected?)
Scream Is A Worthy (Albeit Unconnected) Addition To The Franchise
Few slasher films can match up to how great the originalScreamfilm is, and while there are no outright bad films in the franchise, most would probably agree that none of them quite reach the same level as the iconic 1996 movie.
Despite that, there is a lot to love about the other five films, as well as the TV series, which attempted to take the franchise in a brand-new direction. As a result,the move from movies to television allowed characters to be more fleshed out than ever, though the show loses some of the snappy pacing that Wes Craven’s original film does so well.
A lot of successful movie franchises tend to branch out into numerous spin-offs, including TV shows, with most of them being canon to the main installment. That isn’t the case forScream: The TV Series, as it is entirely its own thing. There are no connections to Sidney Prescott, Billy Loomis, any other character, or any of the films throughout the show’s three seasons. It was a bold move by the franchise, but it turned out to be the right decision from a creative standpoint, as it allowed for more freedom to explore its own mythos.
Don’t Expect Scream: The TV Series To Be Like The Modern Scream Movies
Scream: The TV Series Was A New Take On The Existing Franchise
While it shares the same name as the rest of the franchise,fans of the movies shouldn’t expectScream: The TVseries to be like them, especially when it comes to the modern “rebooted” films. WhileScream(2022) andScream 6were incredible successes, they relied heavily on the original four Wes Craven films, building out their own narrative from what came before, especially the firstScreammovie. WithScream 7bringing back several more charactersfrom past installments, the franchise seems content to keep the nostalgia flowing.
That’s what is so admirable aboutScream: The TV Series:it opted to do its own thing, choosing to tell a brand-new story that borrowed from the franchise’s formulainstead of living in its shadow. Even Ghostface’s mask through the first two seasons of the series was a new take on the iconography of what came before. ThoughScream: The TV Seriesisn’t connected to the rest of the movies, it is a must-watch for fans of the franchise, as it successfully adapts theScreamformula to the television medium.
Scream: The TV Series
Cast
In the town of Lakewood, a masked killer’s spree exposes dark secrets among a group of teenagers, particularly Emma Duval, who is linked to the town’s past tragedies. As the body count rises, Emma and her friends must unmask the murderer before becoming the next victims.
Scream
Created by Kevin Williamson and originally helmed by Wes Craven, the Scream franchise takes a meta approach to the slasher horror franchise, centering on teenagers well-versed in the genre who find themselves hunted and killed by figures donning the Ghostface mask. The first four movies revolved around Neve Campbell’s Sydney Prescott as she frequently found herself the target of different Ghostface killers, while the fifth and sixth installments introduced new protagonists, sisters Tara and Sam, with their own dark past connected to the original Ghostface killer.
