Scream 4 to shoot this spring

Dimension Films has confirmed that Scream 4 will go under the camera this spring, with Wes Craven back in the director’s chair.

The new film, which reunites Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette against a new slasher-movie-loving psycho, has been given a release date of 12 April, 2011.

Which means it’ll be hitting cinemas almost bang on 11 years after the series shrieked its last with Scream 3 in February 2000, which supposedly rounded out the Scream Trilogy .

Writer Kevin Williamson (who scribbled the first two, and exec produced the third) has been secretly squirreling away at the script, which he has proposed as a brand new trilogy, with treatments for Screams 5 and 6 also filed in a drawer marked ‘open and die’ (probably).

Wes Craven, who was holding out on signing onto the fourquel until he read the script, evidently is happy with what Williamson has dreamed up to resurrect the franchise.

In a confirmation of what we already knew, Dimension revealed that their 2011 slate is playing it safe by continuing its roster of successful franchises – Scream being their figurehead for dead cert hits. God bless the recession.

Says Dimension chief Bob Weistein:

" Scream has been such an integral part of Dimension's history, and I look forward to continuing the franchise."

As well as reuniting the original triumvirate of Scream survivors, this new flick will introduce a cast of new, younger characters. Expect a few faces from Williamson’s CW show The Vampire Diaries to make an appearance, then.

Sick of Scream -ing? Or crying out for more?