1.From the opening scene, moviegoers in 1996 were scared silly by Wes Craven's "Scream." After all, the character played by the most famous actor in the cast was done in before the opening credits. But that wasn't how it was originally planned to be.

Drew Barrymore was originally cast in the lead role of Sidney Prescott, but her schedule changed unexpectedly and she wouldn't be able to film the whole movie. It was actually her idea to switch her to the part of Casey Becker, a less time-consuming but ultimately iconic role. "The first scene was really reminiscent of [the 1979 horror movie] 'When a Stranger Calls,'" Barrymore told Entertainment Weekly, "and it was absolutely my favorite part."

After an exhaustive search -- both Reese Witherspoon and Brittany Murphy were considered for the role -- Neve Campbell, the then 23-year-old star of TV's "Party of Five," was cast as Sidney. Now, 14 years later, Ghostface is after her again in "Scream 4." Click ahead to find out some other little-known facts about this horror movie franchise that just can't be killed.




2.David Arquette also returns in "Scream 4," but his character of Dewey Riley wasn't intended to live through the first movie. In the script, Dewey didn't survive his injuries, and that's even how the film was shot. But Wes Craven also filmed an alternate ending where Dewey survived, and when test audiences said they liked Arquette's performance the movie was re-edited and Dewey lived to appear in three more movies.less





3."Scream 4" introduces a fresh cast of young actors into the franchise. New stars Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin, Aimee Teegarden, Shenae Grimes, Lucy Hale and Marielle Jaffee appear in this movie, and all of them are 21 years old. So when the first "Scream" movie opened in 1996, they were all only seven. Their costar Emma Roberts just turned 20 this past February, which means the previous movie in the series, "Scream 3," opened just one week before her ninth birthday.less





4.Kevin Williamson's script for the first film was originally titled "Scary Movie," and it wasn't until late in the shooting that executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein insisted on changing the title to "Scream." Williamson and Craven hated the change at first, but eventually both conceded it was the right call. Of course, the Weinsteins later use the title "Scary Movie" for their parody of "Scream," and it actually made over $100 million more worldwide than the original movie did. Anthony Anderson, who plays Deputy Perkins in "Scream 4," is the only actor to play roles in both the "Scream" and "Scary Movie" franchises.




5.There's one question that "Scream" fans have been asking since the first movie: Who does the scary voice on the phone that taunts the victims before they're attacked. The answer is this man, voice actor Roger L. Jackson. But he doesn't just record his lines after the movie is over. From the beginning Wes Craven had Jackson on the set to actually talk to the actors over the phone to heighten the realism of their performance. And to keep it mysterious, the stars are never allowed to see Jackson face-to-face. Jackson has also lent his voice to numerous cartoons and video games, most notably as the super-intelligent ape Mojo Jojo in "The Powerpuff Girls."