Radio Silence Talks Sequel, Scream 7

Radio Silence, the filmmaking collective of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, are finally back for more twisted fun and sadistic games in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the original property that took their careers to the next level back in 2019. 

When The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the directing duo three weeks out from their sequel’s March 20 release, they were all smiles. They’re confident in their Samara Weaving-led follow-up, and together with Searchlight, they were eager to screen the film for press over a month out from release, a tell-tale sign of confidence for any movie. 

The new installment picks up right where the 2019 horror-thriller left off. Weaving’s Grace MacCaullay is smoking her victory cigarette having just defeated the Le Domas family, her wealthy in-laws for half a day, at their ritualistic and deadly take on hide-and-seek. She quickly collapses from the injuries she’s sustained, and when she awakens in a hospital bed, she’s greeted by her estranged biological sister (and outdated emergency contact), Faith MacCaullay (Kathryn Newton). The bickering sisters are soon forced to work together as Grace’s win over a “High Council family” has triggered a more expansive game of hide-and-seek among four other elite families who are competing to be the head of the shadowy institution that secretly runs the world.

THR last caught up with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett for their vampire thriller, Abigail (2024), and at that point in time, they were offering their well-wishes to the Ready or Not 2 creative team. While they’d done some writing on the script years earlier, the sequel was fully in their rearview mirror. But they did come home from promoting Abigail with the inspiration to write an original sister story for their Ready or Not star, Weaving, and their Abigail co-star, Newton. Shortly thereafter, they got a call from Ready or Not and Abigail producer, Tripp Vinson, as part of a last-ditch effort to bring them back into the sequel’s fold. 

“After Tripp called, we were like, ‘We’re going to steal our own [Weaving-Newton sister story] idea. We’ll pitch it to the gang and see if they like it.’ And they jumped on it,” Bettinelli-Olpin tells THR in support of Ready or Not 2’s March 13 South by Southwest premiere and March 20 theatrical release. “Once that sisterly idea clicked into place, we got super excited about jumping back into Ready or Not 2.”

Everything seemed to be in its right place until Radio Silence were thrown a potential catastrophic curve ball. Ten days before filming was slated to start, Weaving, their battle-tested scream queen, suddenly couldn’t walk. She wrecked her back grabbing a pillow of all things. 

“I don’t think we’ve ever been more anxious about the prep of a movie and whether or not it was going to happen,” Gillett says. “Sam couldn’t even move. She was just lying on the floor, and we were all acting as if we were filming a movie in a week and a half,” Bettinelli-Olpin adds.

Luckily, Weaving’s condition improved a few days before the start of principal photography, although she admittedly did much less stunt work than she normally would. 

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett also happened to be talking with THR a few hours before Scream 7’s preview screenings on Feb. 26, and unlike the current brain trust of that franchise, they were eager to talk about the ups and downs of their tenure on Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023). At any rate, they believe in the principle that a rising tide lifts all boats, so they were rooting for Scream 7’s box office success at the time. (It has in fact succeeded financially with a franchise-best opening weekend. Radio Silence received contractual/vanity EP credits.)

“What we make is only successful if the things around it are successful. So it’s a good question [as to whether we’re feeling competitive with Scream 7], but we honestly want that movie to crush because it’s good for us,” Gillett says. “If people show up at the theater and watch it, they’ll be more willing to show up to the theater for Ready or Not 2 when it comes out March 20.”

Radio Silence’s Scream films were well-received critically and commercially, averaging $152 million at the worldwide box office. However, there were certainly some speed bumps, such as when they were subjected to a bake-off between their directors’ cut of Scream (2022) and the studio’s preferred shorter cut. Both versions achieved comparable test scores, but when the powers that be looked under the hood, Radio Silence’s cut tested higher in terms of emotional investment. That’s why it became the iteration that made it into multiplexes.

“It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose,” Gillett recalls. “So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple weeks.”

At a particular point in Ready or Not 2, Weaving’s Grace goes toe to toe with another young woman from a council family. I won’t say too much about the character who’s played memorably by actor Maia Jae, but she does have an axe to grind with Grace over something they have in common. There’s enough of a resemblance between Jae and one of Radio Silence’s frequent collaborators that viewers may inevitably wonder whether Melissa Barrera was ever in the mix for the role. She and Weaving both share a couple key commonalities as well. They’ve led a total of five Radio Silence movies between the two of them, and Weaving was originally meant to play Barrera’s role of Sam Carpenter in Scream (2022) and Scream 6. Weaving’s nickname of Sam even inspired the character’s name, so the notion of them brawling in Ready or Not 2 could’ve been some meta fun.

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are typically game for meta shenanigans, a likely byproduct of helming two meta slasher movies in the Scream franchise. Abigail also subtly included a painting of a distant relative to Henry Czerny’s Tony Le Domas from Ready or Not. But in the case of Barrera joining Ready or Not 2, they indicate it would’ve been too self-referential.

“We love Melissa. We made three movies with her, and we’d make more,” Bettinelli-Olpin says. “We also were conscious of not overwhelming this movie with our stuff. Kathryn was already doing so much of that coming from Abigail. But there’s a version, somewhere, of Melissa [in that role].”

Gillett adds: “Our movies will always have a little bit of that meta language in it, but because Scream is so meta in its DNA, there was a little fear of like, ‘Are we speaking too much outside the world of Ready or Not?” 

Below, during a conversation with THR, Radio Silence also discuss why they aren’t intimidated by the scale of their next film, The Mummy 4, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

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When we last spoke for Abigail, we talked about Ready or Not 2 being in the hands of someone else. You said you hadn’t worked on the script in years, and you wished everybody the best of luck. What happened from there? 

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN Well, after Abigail, there was a serendipitous turn of events, one of them being that we did not have a job.

RADIO SILENCE (Laugh.)

BETTINELLI-OLPIN [Abigail and Ready or Not producer] Tripp Vinson called us up and was like, “Hey guys, Ready or Not 2? Would you!?” As we discussed with you, we’d stepped away from it. Tripp then said, “If we can figure it out, schedule-wise, would you guys be interested in coming back to do it in this window?” And we were like, “Yes, but give us a beat because we need to figure out the emotional core of the story.”

TYLER GILLETT Yeah, we re-read the [older Ready or Not 2] script, and we were like, “Fuck, this is good.” But being years away from it, you read things with a fresh-eye approach. 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Then we were like, “What is the in here?” And having just worked with Kathryn Newton on Abigail, we’d already had the takeaway that Samara and Kathyrn need to be in a movie together as sisters. So, as soon as we got home from Abigail, we wrote a script, just to get it out of our system, for the two of them. Then, after Tripp called, we were like, “We’re going to steal our own [Weaving-Newton sister] idea. We’ll pitch to the gang and see if they like it.” And they jumped on it. They were like, “Yeah, oh my God, that’d be great. It deepens Grace as a character and gives us a lot of fun drama here.” The first Ready or Not is such an anti-love story in a lot of ways. You watch that perfect relationship fall apart. And in this one, we were like, “Well, what’s the love story? How do we give Grace a love story? What’s the inverse?” So once that sisterly idea clicked into place, we got super excited about jumping back into Ready or Not 2. 

For years, I was one of many that urged Chris Landon and Jason Blum to pair Kathryn Newton and Jessica Rothe in a Freaky Death Day crossover, and they didn’t seize the day. But then you guys came along and created another dynamic duo in Kathryn and Samara. Did the older script have a version of who Kathryn is now playing? 

GILLETT There was a sister-adjacent character. We knew that there had to be a new core relationship for the sequel, and we went through a handful of iterations. It was a friend, a police officer and, for a minute, a daughter of one of the family members. So we were circling the notion and the energy of a real central relationship and sounding board for Grace. One of the things we knew and felt when we reread it was it can’t just be Grace on the run again, fighting people in a bigger, badder or bolder way. There needed to be something deeper and more specific to the emotional journey. And there’s a cheat code in the sister character. By and large, it’s so relatable, whether it’s a sister or another family member. We are siblings of sorts, and we also have actual siblings. So you just go, “Oh, right. I can understand, without knowing everything, how a relationship like that could fall apart.” It weirdly needs less explanation while still somehow being more specific, deeper, richer and personal. And knowing that the movie was going to have the pace that it has, there needed to be a bit of a hack to how important and significant this relationship maybe was and then what the wound is for it to have fallen apart. 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN It was a light-bulb moment. Thematically, it fits so well. In the first movie, Grace doesn’t have a family [coming from the foster system], and all she wants is a family [of her choice]. To then make the second movie about her reclaiming the family she’d turned away from, we had moments where we were like, “Why didn’t we see this earlier? This just fits. What were we running from then?”

GILLETT It doesn’t matter how you get there as long as you get there.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Exactly. 

Samara accidentally gave Andie MacDowell a black eye on the first movie, and she told me a couple months ago that Kathryn avenged Andie on the sequel. What scene led to Kathryn clocking Samara by mistake? 

GILLETT It was the sniper sequence. There’s some gunfire, and both of them had to duck and hit the dirt while they’re handcuffed. But hitting the ground together could only be done in a very specific way because they were tethered to one another. So Kathryn went down first with her leg up, and Sam went down right on top of Kathryn’s foot. There’s video evidence of it in the blooper reel. 

Sam really had a rough go of it. She also had a last-minute back issue, so how uncertain did things get?

GILLETT I don’t think we’ve ever been more anxious about the prep of a movie and whether or not it was going to happen.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN I would say that we, full stop, were in denial. It was straight-up denial. I should show you a picture. We sat down to talk with Sam and Kat about the movie and the characters and what we’re doing. This was a week and a half before filming, and Sam couldn’t even move. She was just lying on the floor, and we were all acting as if we were filming a movie in a week and a half. We were wondering, “How do we do that if Samara can’t even stand? What could we do?” 

GILLETT She only lays down in one scene in the movie. She’s legitimately running at full speed the rest of the movie. 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN It was literally within a few days of filming that she just showed up and was like, “Guys, my back’s back! It’s working.” (Bettinelli-Olpin mimics the motion Weaving was making.) We were like, “Don’t undo it!” 

GILLETT The way she injured her back was very funny in a way. She was like, “I was picking up a pillow and my back just went out. “

It’s always something stupid like that.

GILLETT Yeah, it’s always just the most everyday, most innocuous thing. During camera tests, we were doing the hair-and-makeup looks and costume looks for everybody. Sam walked out in the dress, and we could tell that she was at 40 percent. She was just so seized up, and we were like, “Fuck, man.” So we prayed to Le Bail [the film series’ supernatural overlord] that she’d pull through, and here we are. 

We’re currently talking on the day of Scream 7’s release, and your movie is set to hit theaters a few weeks after it. I know you’re going to say that you can’t wait to see it and that you have many friends over there, but are you still feeling a little competitive? 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN I don’t think we’re feeling competitive with it. We both really made peace with leaving the Scream world behind us. And you’re right. We do love a lot of people involved. But we’ve also been so focused on this movie.

GILLETT And we worked with a lot of those same people on Ready or Not 2 in some respect. We want everything in this genre to succeed. There is always something fun to us in the competitive nature of a release. We’d be lying if we said that wasn’t part of the excitement of having a movie hit theaters. It’s the gamification of the movie getting out there and its tracking numbers and all of that stuff. But at the end of the day, it only works if the genre succeeds. What we make is only successful if the things around it are successful. So it’s a good question, but we honestly want that movie to crush because it’s good for us. If people show up at the theater and watch it, they’ll be more willing to show up to the theater for Ready or Not 2 when it comes out March 20.

Part of the reason why you left was because you wanted to make something else first. 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Right.

Well, as it turned out, you made two movies by the time they got their act together. Would you still not change how it all worked out?

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Not in a million years. We love creating new things. Ready or Not 2 is a sequel, but it’s a sequel to something we created. So it does feel like an original. It has that original energy. We also had the greatest fucking time making Abigail. It’s a movie that is finding its audience, post-release. It obviously wasn’t a runaway hit, but we were lucky to be able to put something new into the world. We even tried that with our Scream movies, especially Scream VI. It was like, “There’s five of these now. How do we make something new? Let’s take some swings and challenge the audience a little.” So it’s always about challenging the audience and challenging ourselves. How do we create something new even if it’s in a preexisting franchise? Of course, I say that knowing that our next movie [The Mummy 4] is also part of a preexisting franchise.

RADIO SILENCE (Laugh.)

GILLETT We really try hard, and succeed, at falling deeply in love with whatever we’re working on. I don’t think we’ve ever made something where it’s like, “Yeah, we’ll just jump on that and make it for them.” There’s no “one for us, one for them.” They’re all for us. So the only way that we know how to give all of ourselves to something is to truly fall deeply, deeply in love with the project, the script and the process. So, no, I don’t think we would change a thing about [our exit from the Scream franchise] because Abigail and Ready or Not 2 have been a dream.

There’s a difference between the interview you give during the release of a movie and the interview you give years later about it. That leads me to your interview with Mike Flanagan in 2024. You revealed that there was some baking going on during Scream 5’s post-production. Can you shed any light on what was being taste-tested?

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Certainly. There were two cuts of that movie. There was the one that exists and everyone has seen. Then there was another cut where the first half was totally different. It was just a very shortened version of the first half of the movie, and that was the studio cut at the end of the day.

GILLETT Yeah, what they valued about the movie was very different from what we valued about the movie at the end of the day. That’s how you end up in those bake-offs. (Laughs.) 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN 100 percent. This keeps coming up for us [in post]. The things that we love the most in anything we make are usually the things that have the biggest target on them in the edit to cut. They’re the things that are a little off-kilter and offbeat.

GILLETT And they may seem inessential. 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, we’ll hear, “Do we need this? Why is this here? This isn’t what would normally happen in every movie.” And our reaction is, “Well, yeah, that’s why it’s there. That’s why we like it.” So there was some of that in the bake-off for Scream 5. The nutshell version is we tested both of them, and because the second half was the same in each one, they both tested extremely similar. But when you went into the details of it — and more than anything, when you watched the reactions — people who saw the cut that exists had a great time.

GILLETT They internalized it.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, they talked about it in an excited way on a character level. With the other version, they were like, “Yeah, it was cool. I liked it. ” But there was no energy behind it, and they weren’t attaching to any of the characters. They didn’t really care. So that really helped us get our version into theaters. 

GILLETT If people are not familiar with the data from that preview process, you get extremely granular information about what people like, what people didn’t, how people responded to the characters, how people respond to certain scenes. And that is where it was clear that one cut was scoring much higher than the other. It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose. So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple weeks. 

I don’t want to discount Maia Jae. She’s terrific in Ready or Not 2 as a member of one of the High Council families. However, I couldn’t help but imagine another individual in that role. It would’ve allowed your two leading ladies — the original Sam Carpenter versus the actual Sam Carpenter — to square off. Did you ever at least consider casting Melissa Barrera in that part?  

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, I mean, listen, we’d work with Melissa on anything. We love Melissa. We made three movies with her, and we’d make more. The whole casting process, so much of it was because we were shooting in Toronto on a small budget. So we cast local, and we got so lucky with local casting on the first one. We didn’t think we’d ever come close on the second one. And when we met [Toronto-based] Maia Jae, we were like, “Oh my God, she’s perfect for this.” We also were conscious of not overwhelming this movie with our stuff. Kathryn was already doing so much of that coming from Abigail. But yes, we love Melissa. There’s a version, somewhere, of Melissa [in that role].

GILLETT Yeah, our movies will always have a little bit of that meta language in it, but because Scream is so meta in its DNA, there was a little fear of like, “Are we speaking too much outside the world and grounded nature of Ready or Not?” 

You also cast a local actor named David Cronenberg as Chester Danforth, the head of the High Council. If you had shot in Albuquerque, would his involvement probably not have happened? 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN I don’t think that we would’ve had the opportunity. When you’re making a movie at this [budget] level, local casting is so important. It’s such a big part of it. And the fact that David Cronenberg is considered local casting in Toronto is a miracle. 

GILLETT And he’s great as an actor.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, we can’t say enough nice things about him. He was incredible to us, as well as the cast and the crew. It was our co-casting director, Jason’s [Knight] idea. We were in such a tight little box of who we had the ability to cast. And he was like, “Okay, it’s outside the box, but David Cronenberg. It probably won’t happen, but let’s take that shot.” 

GILLET With a big asterisk. “It’s a long shot.”

BETTINELLI-OLPIN He probably sent us that email on a Tuesday, and by Thursday, we’d got the, “Hey, David’s in. Let’s go. 

GILLETT When he showed up for the fitting, there was all this chatter around the office. “Fuck, David Cronenberg is here.” He’s just such a legend. We’re happy to report that the giant portrait of him that hangs in the Danforth Resort is now at our office, and it is truly larger than life. It is shocking to describe how big it is.

The Mummy 4 is going to be a big leap for you guys in terms of scale. Are you as ready as you’ll ever be for something on that level? 

RADIO SILENCE (In unison.) Yeah! 

BETTINELLI-OLPIN We’ve worked at a lot of different budget levels, and the movies always feel the same. You never have enough time and money, no matter how much time and money you have. We thrive off of those limitations. We love it because it focuses you on what matters and what’s important. And with The Mummy, it is Rachel [Weisz] and Brendan [Fraser] that make that movie so special. They’re why we all love it. So our working style fits really well with that because it has to be about those characters and their journey. And regardless of budget, it’s got to fit into that mindset of, “What are these characters going through, and why do we love them?” And all that said, we’re very excited to go shoot a big epic fucking adventure. It’s always been a dream. So we’re pinching ourselves that we get to do both of those things at once.

GILLETT Yeah, the rubber meets the road in a really similar way on every set. You have to have great performers in front of a camera, and you have to call action. And whether it’s 60 setups like we did some days on Ready or Not 2 — or seven setups in the desert, shooting sweeping vistas with Brendan and Rachel — it will feel different, but also weirdly the same. And by and large, we are ready for it.

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Ready or Not 2: Here I Come premieres March 13 at South by Southwest, followed by a wide theatrical release on March 20.