Bob and Harvey Weinstein approached Williamson in early 1999 to pursue a full script for a third installment to the Scream franchise, Scream 3. However, following his successes with the Scream series and other projects such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Williamson had become involved in multiple projects including the development of the short-lived TV series Wasteland and directing his self-penned film Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) which Williamson had written prior to Scream and which had languished in development hell since.' Unable to develop a full script for the production, Williamson instead wrote a 20–30 page draft outline for the film that involved the return of Ghostface to the fictional town of Woodsboro where the "Stab" series, a fictional series of films within a film that exist within the Scream universe and are based on the events of Scream, would be filmed. The Weinsteins hired Arlington Road scribe Ehren Kruger to replace Williamson and helm writing duties, developing a script based on Williamson's notes.
