UPDATED: Joel McHale joins Scream VII cast as Sidney’s husband Mark… but not the one you think

January 16th, 2025 by Marc Comments

Ok, not gonna lie, this is one of the weirdest bits of Scream news yet.

So we all know that the highly anticipated Scream VII is currently filming in Atlanta and we know that it’ll be a mix of the new generation and the OGs (that’s what the kids say, right?) including Neve Campbell and Courtenay Cox returning as Sidney and Gale but we also expected Scream 3’s Patrick Dempsey to return as detective Mark Kincaid who, according to the established lore, was married to Sidney after the events of the third movie.

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This fact was cemented into canon when Dewey asked Sidney in Scream V how Mark was but it seems that, perhaps most appropriately, there’s a twist to this tale… the Mark Sidney is married to isn’t Mark Kincaid, it’s Mark Evans!

Wait, what? Who?

We’ve known for a while now that Dempsey, left, was holding out of signing on to return over a pay dispute but it seems that he’s held out too long as Community and X-Files star Joel McHale has joined the cast as Sidney’s husband.

Clearly this character was meant to be Kincaid but circumstance has called for ingenuity and a new character has been created to fit the bill.

How this new casting will effect the story of the movie is unknown, if at all, at this stage but while it’s sad that Dempsey didn’t return, McHale is a likeable enough actor and he could be a welcome addition to the cast… the Scream fan in me actually kinda likes that this character isn’t who we thought he was.

So, will be be the killer? Or is he set to be the opening kill? Either would make sense at this stage…

Franchise creator Kevin Williamson is directing the new movie which is due to hit cinemas next February.

Thoughts?

UPDATE:

Critical Overlord has shared on Twitter that as far back as last November, Williamson had revealed he didn’t want references to Scream 3 in the new movie as he hates that movie and it may even mean the MArk mentioned by Dewey wasn’t Mark Kincaid… maybe there was more to the story than we all thought we knew:

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Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….