As we celebrate International Women’s Day, Neve Campbell leaving the Scream franchise becomes the latest instance of women raising their concerns about wage gap within the film industry.
“What’s your favourite scary movie?” creeps out of the phone in the iconic line from the Scream franchise, but it’s safe to say Sydney Prescott wouldn’t be replying with ‘Scream Six’ anytime soon.
Neve Campbell plays the main character Sydney Prescott in the Scream franchise, which sees its sixth entry hit theatres on Friday, March 10th. But don’t expect to see Sydney on the big screen after Campbell left production and publicly shamed Paramount Pictures for the money they had offered her to reprise the role.
Whilst the amount of money offered is undisclosed at the moment, it was insulting enough for her to say the following in an interview with People.
“As a woman in this business, I think it’s really important for us to be valued and to fight to be valued.”
“I honestly don’t believe that if I were a man and had done five instalments of a huge blockbuster franchise over 25 years, that the number that I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man.”
Scream’s resident hapless police officer turned Sheriff and 26-year co-star of Neve Campbell, David Arquette supported her decision, as did many other co-stars with Scream 6’s co-director also showing love for the actor.
In 2022, the Scream franchise was reinvigorated with the fifth instalment ‘Scream’ ending the 11-year hiatus of the franchise and warranting further sequels. Additionally, 2022 saw a legacy sequel to the 1986 classic, Top Gun with much of the original cast also returning.
Variety reports that Tom Cruise will receive further payments off the backend of Top Gun: Maverick due to clauses in his contract granting Cruise royalties and payments based on streaming numbers – a deal which has been estimated to earn him $100 million.
Of course, Scream 6 is not forecast to generate the revenue of Top Gun: Maverick, but the disparity between women’s pay in Hollywood and sexism in film casting is far from new.
Happy International Women’s Day to Neve Campbell who is NOT in Scream VI because they tried to pay her pennies and she knew her worth pic.twitter.com/LBcr5Dhd6y
— Meech (@MediumSizeMeech) March 8, 2023
Research undertaken by Sofia Izquierdo Sanchez and Maria Navarro Paniagua at Lancaster University found that women earn around $2.2 million less than their male counterparts.
A common response to this is that the most popular movie stars are male (which is an issue in itself), but the analysis conducted at Lancaster was careful to consider these aspects -including things such as the actors’ previous financial success, the film’s characteristics, the actors’ awards catalogue as well as their social media following and popularity.
Once these variables are removed, we are left with the damning statistic outlined earlier: a $2.2 million gap in pay between genders.
Jennifer Lawrence has been very public about her disgust for such issues including multiple examples of herself being paid less than her male co-stars. In the example of 2013’s ‘American Hustle’, she saw a pay of 7% of the film’s profits whilst her male co-stars (who had similar screen times) earned 9% of profits.
Lawrence issued a statement saying she was mad at herself for not negotiating to get paid the same as “the lucky people with dicks”. She said that when women negotiate, they worry about being ‘liked’ or coming across as ‘spoiled’.
However, when receiving $5 million less than Leonardo DiCaprio in their film “Don’t Look Up”, Lawrence was accepting, stating that “Leo brings in more box office than I do. I’m extremely fortunate and happy with the deal”.
She goes on to state that in other situations if “you do question something that appears unequal, you’re told it’s not gender disparity – but they can’t tell you exactly what it is”
This deep-rooted misogyny is rampant throughout Hollywood and the film industry as a whole. Often, women will receive fewer calls and job offers after a certain age, while male actors are seen to age gracefully and continue with the same level of work throughout their careers.
In 2017 ‘Women and Hollywood’ founder Melissa Silverstein suggested that the few women in power must strive for a world where jobs are split evenly between men and women in the film industry and applauded Nicole Kidman as an example of a woman using her power to enact this.
There are huge strides needed for fully progressing to equal representation and recognition in the film industry, and it is true that Hollywood is more inclusive now than it used to be, but with examples such as Neve Campbell’s, Ghostface isn’t the only one stabbing Hollywood’s actresses in the back.
Image credits: Dimension Films on YouTube