Melissa Barrera Calls Out ‘Scream 7’ Box Office Numbers and Nothing She Said Is Going to Sit Well With Paramount

Few Hollywood fallouts in recent memory have been as swift, as messy, or as politically charged as the one that stripped Melissa Barrera of her leading role in the ‘Scream‘ franchise. The actress played Sam Carpenter across ‘Scream’ and ‘Scream VI’ before being dropped by Spyglass Media Group in late 2023, following a series of Instagram posts in which she criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Spyglass cited a “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate” in its announcement, a characterization Barrera firmly rejected.

The ripple effects were immediate and wide-ranging. Co-star Jenna Ortega also exited the project, director Christopher Landon departed, and ‘Scream 7’ was creatively retooled to center on legacy cast members including Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette. Barrera has said that following her firing, major acting offers went quiet for roughly ten months, a period she has described as one of the lowest of her life. The franchise, by all reported accounts, did not skip a beat commercially.

Now, in a wide-ranging interview with Variety, published on May 6, 2026, and conducted by journalist Marlow Stern, Barrera has made her most incendiary claim yet. When the conversation turned to ‘Scream 7’ and its reported performance, she did not deflect. “I think they lied about the numbers,” she said. “I don’t think it made that much money.”

The film opened across more than 3,500 theaters and grossed over 63 million dollars in its domestic debut, the highest opening weekend in franchise history. According to Box Office Mojo, ‘Scream 7’ has brought in over 207 million dollars worldwide, putting it more than 40 million dollars ahead of ‘Scream VI’s total. Theatrical box office reporting is independently tracked across exhibitors, analytics firms, ticketing systems, and industry reporting services, making it effectively impossible for a studio to unilaterally inflate its figures.

Barrera’s remarks did not stop there. When asked whether the returning cast members, including franchise originals and her former co-stars, felt like they were crossing a picket line by rejoining the project after her firing, she did not hesitate. “Oh, one hundred percent,” she said, adding that she believed they all were. It is the kind of answer that will draw very different reactions depending on where a person stands in the broader debate surrounding her exit.

Barrera noted in the interview that fans of the ‘Scream’ films have continued to show up for her, coming to see her perform on Broadway and bringing memorabilia to the stage door to be signed. She is currently starring as Rose in the Tony-nominated Broadway musical ‘Titanique’, a campy parody built around the Céline Dion songbook, which received four Tony nominations including Best Musical. Her upcoming film projects include the horror feature ‘Black Tides’ and the Peacock thriller ‘The Copenhagen Test’.

The Variety interview paints a picture of someone who has found genuine joy in her current creative chapter, even as she acknowledges that ‘Scream 7’ becoming the biggest entry in the franchise was something she did not see coming. Whether her skepticism about the numbers reads as principled doubt or wounded pride will likely divide audiences just as sharply as her original firing did.

What do you think, does Barrera have a point worth examining, or is this a case of the ‘Scream’ franchise moving on while she finds it harder to do the same?