Matthew Lillard Called 'Scream' 'Lame' in 1996 — Then It Ran for 30 Years

By Elena Vasquez

Matthew Lillard thought "Scream" was "lame" and that "nobody" would see it. He said so from a New York Comic Con panel, three decades after the 1996 release launched a seven-film franchise.

Lillard played Stuart "Stu" Macher, one of the two original Ghostface killers. His co-stars included Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, David Arquette and Drew Barrymore. The latest installment of the franchise arrived earlier this year.

The actor described the moment of his misjudgment with cinematic precision.

"I was in the back of a car, driving home from work one night, at like six in the morning, covered in blood," Lillard said during the panel, via EW. He and his co-stars were mapping their next moves. Cox was returning to "Friends." Campbell was heading back to "Party of Five."

"And I'd literally just been on a pilot, and I'm like, 'This movie's lame. Nobody's gonna see it. I'm going to go become a television star,'" Lillard said.

What happened to that television plan?

It collapsed. Lillard told the panel "that pilot never went, and here we are 30 years later." He added that "nobody could have possibly ever imagined" what "Scream" would become.

The arithmetic is stark. One 1996 slasher became seven films. That is a franchise averaging a new entry roughly every four years for three decades — a run few horror properties match.

The takeaway in plain words: the film Lillard wrote off became the defining credit of his career.

The 'Scooby-Doo' confession

This is not Lillard's only recent admission about a franchise he doubted or resented. In Variety's "Know Their Lines" video series, the "She's All That" actor addressed his feelings about the early 2000s live-action "Scooby-Doo" films — 2002's "Scooby-Doo" and 2004's "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."

He admitted he began to resent the films after the second one disappointed at the box office.

"It was the first big movie that I was in and it was a big opportunity for me," Lillard said. "And then I felt that 'Scooby Doo' is this big movie, I'm now going to go off and be a big movie star. And it was right about this time, after the second movie, that my career took a real nosedive for a long time."

He was blunt about the low point: "Like, I may be one of those guys from the '90s that never comes back."

Lillard framed the films as a "love-hate relationship" born of misdirected blame. "This movie is a love-hate relationship for me because I was like, 'It's "Scooby Doo's" fault. That's why I'm not working,'" he said.

A pattern of wrong predictions

Set side by side, the two confessions form a study in career misjudgment. Lillard dismissed "Scream" as beneath him, and it became a seven-film institution. He pinned his hopes on "Scooby-Doo" as his launchpad to movie stardom, and his career stalled after its 2004 sequel.

Both admissions arrive as the "Scream" franchise remains active, with the seventh installment released earlier this year and Lillard back on convention stages fielding questions about a film he once called "lame" — the same franchise he is now inseparable from, 30 years on.

The plain takeaway: in Hollywood, the project an actor underestimates may be the one that outlives every plan made in its shadow.