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Earlier this week, it was reported that Scream VI star Melissa Barrera had been fired from the upcoming seventh installment in the franchise due to opinions she shared about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The firing of Barrera has sparked a massive reaction in the film community, prompting all sorts of reactions from both sides of the argument.
Here is what Barrera said in one of her many posts about the ongoing war, for context:
“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity no water … People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
One aspect that all seem to agree on, though, is how strange it is that Barrera got fired for exercising her right to free speech while The Flash star Ezra Miller was able to keep his job as the Flash in the DCEU despite multiple disturbing allegations and criminal charges made against him.
“Ezra Miller went on a 10-state crime spree and Hollywood was like ‘Hang on, let’s see where they’re going with this,’ but suggest on IG that maybe we’re not getting the full truth about geopolitics and suddenly…” said one viral tweet, which has racked up 27,000 likes at the time of this writing.
Another tweet expressing a similar sentiment has gotten over 72,000 likes.
https://twitter.com/wetwalrus31/status/1727161282242216037
It should be noted that while Miller had legal issues in both 2011 and 2020, a majority of the allegations and charges against him came in 2022, which was after The Flash had already been filmed. Comparatively, production on Scream 7 has yet to begin.
Following Barrera’s dismissal from the film, the production company behind the franchise, Spyglass, released the following statement via a spokesperson:
“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.”
Given that Barrera was one of the leads of the most recent Scream film alongside Jenna Ortega, the film will likely have to be entirely rewritten if it does proceed forward, which now feels a bit uncertain given that some movie fans are claiming they’ll now be boycotting the franchise.