Wes Craven almost got fired from 'Scream' because of Drew Barrymore's opening scene

• Wes Craven was "almost" fired from "Scream" after execs didn't like footage of the opening scene.
• According to a new oral history of the film, the studio had numerous critiques of the scene.

Director Wes Craven was almost fired from "Scream" because studio executives didn't like footage of the opening scene with Drew Barrymore, according to a new oral history of the film.

Some of the horror classic's cast and crew recalled executives from Dimension Films voicing their displeasure with the now-iconic scene, even considering replacing Craven as the director.

"The first sequence that was shot was the Drew Barrymore sequence. The studio hated the dailies," editor Patrick Lussier told The Hollywood Reporter, referring to the daily footage (or "dailies") of the film that had been shown to executives.

In the scene, teenager Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) answers a phone call from a mysterious person while home alone. While the caller is initially flirtatious, he subsequently reveals that he's holding Casey's boyfriend hostage, and demands that she answer trivia about horror movies in order to save him. Both Casey and her boyfriend are eventually killed by a masked figure.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson was filming another scene for "Scream" with Craven when the director got a call from the studio about the movie's opening.

"They didn't think anything about it was good. They didn't understand the lack of footage and they didn't see his vision for that sequence at all," Williamson recalled.

According to several of the film's producers, the studio's complaints about the scene ranged from the Ghostface mask not being "scary" enough to footage being "workmanlike at best."

"We were traumatized because we were working really hard, and we thought we were doing great work," producer Marianne Maddalena said.

And Earl Brown, who played Kenny Jones in "Scream," recalled that the actors on the film weren't made aware of the conflict with the studio.

"We as the cast were blissfully unaware of what was going on behind the scenes, that Wes almost got replaced on the film," Brown said. "They were going to fire him."

Luckily, the filmmakers were given the opportunity to quickly edit together the opening scene and show it to Dimension Films in hope of winning their approval. After executives saw Lussier's cut of the scene, they gave them the green light to continue.

"They immediately called out and said, 'We are so wrong. This works so incredibly well. We can't believe how suspenseful and terrifying this is. We clearly had no idea how to look at what you were doing,'" Lussier recalled.

"Scream" first premiered in December 1996, and the film's success at the box office led to three more sequels with Craven. A fifth "Scream" film will be released in January 2022, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett taking over director duties for Craven, who died in 2015.