Actress Jenna Ortega will not return for the latest Scream movie.
Ortega's exit from the franchise follows Scream star Melissa Barrera's Tuesday firing from the series. Ortega's leave is reportedly unrelated to Barrera's firing, per Deadline.
The actress' exit from the franchise allegedly began prior to the actor's strike earlier this year.
Christopher Landon, director for the upcoming seventh installment of the Scream franchise, shared and later deleted a post to X.
“This is my statement," Landon wrote with a broken heart emoji. "Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make.”
Barrera was fired from the franchise on Tuesday after the actress shared a series of pro-Palestinian posts to her social media. In one post, Barrera said Israel was committing “genocide and ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians.
Spyglass Media Group, a co-producer of the upcoming Scream film, released a statement condemning Barrera's pro-Palestinian stance in a Tuesday statement to Variety.
“Spyglass’ stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech," a Spyglass spokesperson told the outlet.
While Ortega's exit from the series is reportedly unrelated to Barrera's firing, the actress has similarly shared pro-Palestinian posts to her social media.
“We must never give up on the people of Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Syria… the list goes on unfortunately," the actress wrote in a 2022 post to X, then Twitter. "For anyone who is willing & wanting to contribute any way they can, I want to form a thread with information. Does anyone have resources/ linked [sic] they could add?”
In another post, Ortega wrote "Decolonize Palestine."
Ortega deactivated her X account earlier this year.
The actress has not made similar remarks on her Instagram account, though she provides a link to Save the Children, an organization providing aid to children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in her Instagram bio.
The first Scream installment, directed by Wes Craven, was released in 1996 and marked the horror film industry's return to the slasher genre. Two sequels were released in 1997 and 2000 followed by a third film in 2011.
The franchise was rebooted with a fifth film in 2022 titled Scream, though the film picks up a decade after the events of Scream 4 with legacy characters reprising their roles alongside a new generation of Scream stars including Ortega and Barrera.
Scream VI was released last March.
