50 Fun Facts About Scream 2

Scream 2 posted the biggest December weekend gross on record until which film beat it two weeks later?

Titanic took the December weekend record within two weeks, yet the slasher sequel's own debut stayed the biggest December opening until 2000.

In Stab, the film within Scream 2, which actress plays Sidney Prescott, paying off a joke from the original?

Tori Spelling got the part because Sidney had sarcastically predicted in the first film that Spelling would play her, and the cameo earned a Golden Raspberry nomination.

The cinema deaths of Maureen Evans and Phil Stevens in Scream 2 are satirized in which parody film?

Scary Movie has its noisy filmgoer Brenda killed in the middle of a screening, though there it is the fed-up audience that silences her.

Which actor, in his first leading film role, plays the Scream 2 film student unmasked as Ghostface?

Timothy Olyphant plays Mickey, a horror buff who actually wants to be caught so that the trial will make him famous.

In Scream 2, reporter Debbie Salt is unmasked as the vengeful mother of which character from the original film?

Billy Loomis was shot dead by Sidney at the end of Scream, and the mother who had abandoned him years earlier comes to Windsor College to settle the score.

Which actress, fresh from I Know What You Did Last Summer, plays doomed sorority sister Cici Cooper in Scream 2?

Sarah Michelle Gellar agreed to the part without reading the script, and squeezed the shoot in between filming Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At the Stab preview in Scream 2, what does the rowdy audience mistake the dying Maureen Evans's cries for?

A publicity stunt is the crowd's guess, so nobody helps her; the killer had simply sat down beside her in her boyfriend's seat.

In Scream 2, Mickey wants to be arrested so that he can blame his killing spree on what at trial?

Movie violence is the scapegoat Mickey has picked, expecting the court case to make him a celebrity, but his partner shoots him before he can try it.

In Scream 2's film-within-a-film Stab, Heather Graham plays Casey Becker, a part first played by which star?

Drew Barrymore's character died in the first film's opening scene, and the sequel's makers credited her casting with making serious actors eager to do horror.

Which director returned for Scream 2 despite fearing that he would be trapped by a horror franchise?

Wes Craven wavered for so long that a replacement was lined up, but he decided he could not leave the sequel to anyone else.

Which actress returns as Sidney Prescott in Scream 2, having signed for a sequel before the original was filmed?

Neve Campbell was the only cast member contracted that early, because Sidney was the one character certain to survive the first film.

Which actress plays Gale Weathers, the reporter whose book on the Woodsboro killings became Stab, in Scream 2?

Courteney Cox won a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for the sequel, in which Gale finally chooses the wounded Dewey's ambulance over filing her report.

Which screenwriter wrote Scream 2 from a five-page sequel outline first used to help sell the original script?

Kevin Williamson attached the outline so that studios would feel they were bidding on a whole franchise, not just a single script.

In Scream 2, Derek embarrasses Sidney with a public serenade of which chart-topping 1970 hit?

I Think I Love You, the Partridge Family's debut single, doubled as the audition piece: every actor trying out for Derek had to perform the scene.

Where at Windsor College is Randy Meeks murdered in broad daylight while on the phone in Scream 2?

Inside a news van is where Ghostface drags him while Gale and Dewey search nearby, a death the screenwriter later said he regretted.

Which Scream 2 character saves Sidney by shooting Debbie Salt, in exchange for a television interview?

Cotton Weary, cleared of murdering Sidney's mother, is hungry for fame, and Sidney repays him by pointing the waiting press his way.

In Scream 2, Sidney is drawn by music to which Windsor College building, where the killers reveal themselves?

The campus theater is where Sidney finds her boyfriend tied up, and where one killer betrays the other by shooting him on stage.

In Stab, the film within Scream 2, which sitcom actor is said to play Deputy Dewey Riley?

David Schwimmer is the name given for Stab's Dewey, a wink at the Friends co-star of the actress who plays Gale.

During production of Scream 2, who reportedly leaked a full script of the film onto the Internet?

One of the extras posted it, so later drafts were printed on paper that resisted photocopying and the killers' reveal reached actors only on the day.

Randy Meeks dies in Scream 2, so how does the character still manage to appear in Scream 3?

In a videotaped message, recorded in case he did not survive, he lays out the rules of a trilogy, because his death had been too conclusive to undo.

Which actress plays Maureen Evans, the Scream 2 opening victim stabbed in front of a cheering cinema crowd?

Jada Pinkett took the cameo after the makers had first approached Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler to appear in the opening sequence.

Where is Phil Stevens when Ghostface kills him during the Stab preview at the start of Scream 2?

In the restroom, he presses his ear to the stall divider to hear odd whimpering next door, and a blade is driven through it.

The star playing Sidney Prescott won Best Female Performance for Scream 2 at which annual ceremony?

MTV Movie Awards voters gave her the 1998 prize, whereas the Saturn Awards only nominated her, and she lost there to Jodie Foster for Contact.

In Scream 2, Sidney's rescuer shoots Debbie Salt on condition of a joint interview with which real-life TV anchor?

Diane Sawyer is the name he asks for, holding the pair at gunpoint while the killer tries to talk him into shooting Sidney instead.

Which actress, just off a nine-year run on the sitcom Roseanne, plays reporter Debbie Salt in Scream 2?

Laurie Metcalf earned the director's praise for how convincingly she played the character's deranged side once the reporter act was dropped.

Which actor won the role of Sidney's boyfriend Derek in Scream 2 after auditioning with a song?

Jerry O'Connell was starring in a television series of his own at the time, one of several leads whose schedules the shoot had to work around.

Which director agreed to take over Scream 2 while its original director wavered, then made The Faculty instead?

Robert Rodriguez was sounded out by the writer and producers and was willing to do it, until the first film's director found he could not let the sequel go.

Which film composer wrote the choral piece Cassandra Aria, heard when Sidney acts in a play in Scream 2?

Danny Elfman's aria was a late addition to another composer's score, and it is reprised during the finale.

Dewey's guitar theme in Scream 2 was lifted from Hans Zimmer's score for which 1996 action film?

Broken Arrow's twanging Duane Eddy guitar was only a placeholder at a test screening, but the audience liked it so much that the studio kept it.

Which California university doubled for parts of the fictional Windsor College in Scream 2?

UCLA lent its grounds to the sequel, and Scream 3 went back there to film Gale's seminar in one of its classrooms.

The fictional Windsor College, where Sidney Prescott studies in Scream 2, is located in which US state?

Ohio is only the setting, since the cameras never went there and four weeks of the shoot took place in Atlanta.

Which studio greenlit Scream 2 while the original Scream was still playing in cinemas?

Dimension Films began weighing a sequel once the first film had grossed more than $50 million in a month, and raised the budget for it.

Scream 2's director sent the ratings board a deliberately gorier cut, expecting trims; what did it receive?

An R rating came back for the bloodier version untouched, because the board felt the film's underlying point justified what it showed.

In the Scream 2 script that leaked online, which friend of Sidney Prescott was secretly one of the killers?

Hallie and her secret lover Derek were fame-seeking killers in that draft, until their partner disposed of them; in the finished film both are innocent victims.

Before settling on Scream 2, the studio considered a title pairing Scream with which word?

Again was one idea, giving Scream Again, and Scream Louder and Scream: The Sequel were also floated before the studio simply numbered it.

Which relative of the actor who plays Dewey Riley appears as the lawman leading the Scream 2 murder investigation?

His father, Lewis Arquette, plays Chief Hartley, the local officer in charge of investigating the Windsor College killings.

Which actor, soon to star in Dawson's Creek, has a small role as a student in Randy's film class in Scream 2?

Joshua Jackson is credited only as Film Class Guy #1, and Dawson's Creek, created by the sequel's screenwriter, began the following year.

In Scream 2, what pattern does Gale Weathers spot in the copycat killer's choice of early targets?

Names echoing past victims is her theory once she realises that Cici is short for Casey, like the girl killed first in Woodsboro.

In Scream 2, what reason does killer Debbie Salt give for murdering Randy Meeks herself?

He insulted her son while taunting Ghostface on the phone, not knowing that the voice on the line belonged to the dead killer's mother.

Why is Derek already tied up and helpless when Sidney finds him near the end of Scream 2?

A fraternity prank left him bound: his frat brothers grabbed him after his public declaration to Sidney, and Mickey shoots him before she can free him.

How does Ghostface finally kill Cici Cooper at the Omega Beta Zeta sorority house in Scream 2?

Thrown from a balcony after being stabbed, she draws the partygoers from a nearby sorority house to the scene, which leaves Sidney exposed to attack.

Which actor plays film geek Randy Meeks, whose death in Scream 2 the screenwriter came to regret?

Jamie Kennedy's character was chosen to die because the three leads were considered safe, so the writer looked to the secondary cast to raise the stakes.

In Stab, the film within Scream 2, which actor plays Sidney's killer boyfriend from the Woodsboro story?

Luke Wilson is credited as playing himself in the role, one of three real stars who turn up in the Stab footage.

Sidney's boyfriend Derek Feldman is a student in which field at Windsor College in Scream 2?

Pre-med sets him apart from his best friend Mickey, the film student who later accuses him of being the second killer to make Sidney hesitate.

In Scream 2, where did Debbie Salt find Mickey before recruiting him as her partner in the killings?

On a serial-killer website is where she found him, and she fed his hunger for fame only to shoot him once he had served her revenge.

Debbie Salt's real first name, Nancy, went unspoken in 1997 and first appeared on screen in which later sequel?

Scream VI finally showed the name, on an FBI agent's list of previous killers; in Scream 2 she is only ever her alias or a dead killer's mother.

Scream 2 held the record for the biggest December opening weekend until which 2000 comedy beat it?

What Women Want took the record in December 2000, three years after the slasher sequel had opened to $32.9 million.

Which composer returned from the first film to score Scream 2, only to see some of his cues replaced?

Marco Beltrami wrote a new theme for Dewey, but after a test screening the studio kept the borrowed placeholder music and used his only sparingly.

According to a Scream 2 cast member, which young actor was offered the role of Mickey but turned it down?

Tobey Maguire said no, by the account of the actor who plays Randy, and the part became another newcomer's first leading film role.

Which actor plays Phil Stevens, the first victim of the Scream 2 copycat, killed at a preview of Stab?

Omar Epps and his on-screen girlfriend play Windsor College seniors, and their murders at the screening bring the press down on Sidney.