It's been 25 years of Scream, and Ghostface returns for another murderous spree next January.

In a new interview with Independent, screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who has written Scream 1, 2, and 4, opened up about his own influences creating characters as a gay man. 

"One of the things I’ve wrestled with is trust, and Sidney trusted no one. Did she really know her mother? Is her boyfriend who he says he is? In the end she wasn’t even trusting herself," he said. "As a gay kid, I related to the final girl [the surviving woman at the end of a horror movie], and to her struggle because it’s what one has to do to survive as a young gay kid, too. You’re watching this girl survive the night and survive the trauma she’s enduring. Subconsciously, I think the Scream movies are coded in gay survival."

So were the casting of Laurie Metcalf, Parker Posey, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Carrie Fisher, all women loved by gay man, a part of Williamson's gay agenda?

Not at all. “It just happened!” he laughs. “It’s a gay universe, I guess.”

The upcoming Scream movie will feature the franchise's first out queer character, Mindy, played by newcomer Jasmin Savoy-Brown. You can spot her with a Pride pin in the movie posters and trailer.

The official synopsis for the movie says that “twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.”

The fifth installment of Scream premieres January 14, 2022. Watch the trailer below: