Called it! Hayden Panettiere back as Kirby for Scream 6

More great news for fans of the Scream franchise…

Only yesterday we reported that Melissa Barrera (Sam), Jasmin Savoy Brown (Mindy), Mason Gooding (Chad) and Jenna Ortega (Tara) were all coming back for Scream 6, which films this summer, after having survived this year’s Scream (here), while we also found out Courtenay Cox is coming back a few weeks earlier (here) with Neve Campbell potentially coming back once again too.

But now one of our other favourites of the franchise has been confirmed as returning too… yes, Hayden Panettiere’s nerdy movie fan Kirby is coming back for the sixth entry, having survived the fourth one.

We reported a while back that the latest movie actually confirmed the character survived Ghostface’s attack in Scream 4 (here) and that when Wes Craven, R.I.P. was originally set to make the fifth and sixth movies, her character was set to return but when Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett took over the franchise, Kirby’s future was in doubt.

And there’s this wonderful little deleted Easter egg from Scream (2022) that would have pretty much confirmed her still being alive:

Oh, how we’ve missed you – Another amazing Easter egg of Kirby on the set of #Scream 🔪 @ScreamMovies pic.twitter.com/0VgPI5zkEi

— Shane Austin Hall (@shaneaustinhall) March 1, 2022

Until, that is, in February Gillet confirmed they had ‘reached out’ to the actress (here) about returning, saying: “Again, I think one of the fun things about the universe of these movies is the off-screen story, you know? Mark and Sidney. What’s happened to Kirby? All of that stuff for us, that’s the fuel that kind of exists in the tank once you leave the theater, and we love thinking about who these characters are outside of the stories that we see on screen.”

It was at this stage we felt confident we might see her return and now our beliefs have been proven true.

While plot details are still not known about the new movie, we have been theorising for a while now that we could see Ghostface return to clean up the characters that have survived previously survived the other movies’ killing sprees, if we’re right – and this is purely me fanboying – then that puts Kirby, and the others, right back in the killer’s sights.

Would they take Panettiere just to killer her in the opening scene? Well, we hope not but, let’s be honest, that’s kinda what this franchise is all about… just ask Liev Schreiber’s Cotton Weary.

Thoughts? Let’s hear them, nerds and nerdettes.

Source: Variety