Why Christopher Landon Really Left Scream VII—Then Got His “Best Revenge” by Making Drop

Few filmmakers know how to mash horror with comedy like Christopher Landon. His genre-bending blockbusters like Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, and Freaky, as well as more straightforward titles like the Shia LaBeouf–led thriller Disturbia and five Paranormal Activity movies, have earned close to $1 billion despite their shoestring budgets. So it’s no wonder that in 2023, he was tapped to helm Scream VII—a highly anticipated sequel starring Scream reboot vets Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera. Then Barrera was fired from the film due to her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war, and Ortega chose to leave it as well. Shortly after, Landon followed their lead.

“Scream was a very dark and tumultuous experience,” the filmmaker says now, sitting at a Los Angeles coffee shop. “I was gobsmacked and in shock for a while, but I’m at a place now where I can talk about it ’cause I was able to use that unpleasant experience and turn it into something positive. And that was Drop.”

Landon’s latest project, opening April 11, is a clever whodunit starring Meghann Fahy as a woman terrorized by a series of anonymous text messages that demand her to kill her date (Brandon Sklenar)—or else her teenage son will be murdered. It’s tense and cheeky and sly all at once, as his best work tends to be. He has a talent for taking classic tropes—a hostage situation, a mysterious villain, high stakes—and creatively molding them into something fresh. “The hardest thing in the genre is to balance intensity and heart—and yet Chris makes it look effortless,” says Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, who has collaborated with Landon on the Paranormal Activity franchise, Happy Death Day, and now Drop. “Somehow, he does this while also being a generous collaborator who makes everyone better.”

Even as Landon was prepping for Scream VII, he worked closely with Drop’s writers to develop the story. But he had to give up the project when Scream demanded his full attention. Getting the job had felt like fate: When Landon was an intern at a production company in 1995, his boss had asked him to take a look at a spec horror script they’d just received. After reading the first few pages, Landon ran to his supervisor’s office and shouted, “You have to buy this!” The script was the original Scream, written by a then unknown Kevin Williamson.

The production company bought the screenplay, and Landon sat in meetings as it was developed. He even drove Williamson around town because the up-and-coming writer didn’t have a car. Nearly three decades later, Landon could hardly believe he’d been brought into the franchise. “It felt like such a full circle moment,” he says, so karmic that Scream VII’s code name was “Full Circle.”

Then, in a shocking plot twist, Landon’s production imploded. Barrera—the film’s star, set to reprise her role after leading Scream’s fifth and sixth installments—made a series of social media posts expressing support for the Palestinian cause and criticizing Israel’s actions in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Her comments were perceived as antisemitic by executives, igniting a firestorm. Soon after, Landon got a call from Spyglass Media Group—the production company behind the horror franchise’s revival—telling him they were firing Barrera. Without her, the movie “all came tumbling down in an instant,” he says. “It was devastating to suddenly cancel everything.”

In slow November 2023, news broke that Barrera had been fired, and her costar Ortega voluntarily left the movie. The cast shakeup dominated headlines, sending some Scream fans who blamed Landon on a reckless and potentially violent rampage. “People were threatening to kill me and my family, to the point where the FBI was getting involved,” he says, still noticeably disturbed. “I got messages saying, ‘I’m going to find your kids, and I’m going to kill them because you support child murder.’” Landon has two sons, ages five and eight, with husband Cody Morris, a digital marketing strategist. “The head of security at various studios and the FBI had to examine the threats. It was highly aggressive and really scary.”

To be clear, Landon says, “I did not fire her. A lot of people think I had something to do with it, and it was not my doing. I had no control of the situation at all.” But because he was the film’s director, he became a target anyway. “I think in the absence of people understanding how Hollywood works and what the hierarchy is, the fans were like, ‘that’s the guy.’ And so they came for me, knives out.”

On December 23, 2023, Landon announced on social media that he had exited the movie as well. He reveals now that the decision to leave the project was his own. “They wanted me to continue on. They basically said, ‘You can restart it. You can figure it out.’ But the amount of abuse that I had to deal with—I decided I didn’t want to give any part of myself to that,” he says. “For me, it was not worth it. I would rather put my efforts into something else, where I could feel appreciated and respected. The hate and abuse really spoiled it for me, and I lost my love for the idea of going forward.”

Still, he says, stepping away was heartbreaking. “In the midst of all the chaos, I was grieving the loss of one of my dream jobs. I went through all the stages—I was shocked, I was sad, and then I got angry. To be a part of this legacy, it was really hard to let it go.”