While attending the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour to promote The Vampire Diaries, writer Kevin Williamson gave us some updates and the current status of Scream 4:

“I’m almost done with the first draft of Scream 4. I’m trying to get that together for Wes Craven. We’ve got to get going on that, during the hiatus. We have Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and Dave Arquette. I was always holding out hope because the pitch was about those three characters. I didn’t want to have to re-route the whole story. We don’t have to do that. I can do it exactly the way I want wanted. The story is going to be told the way I originally conceived it.”

The immediate good news for fans of Scream are that all the principals are back, hopefully this will mean Wes Craven will return to direct. Films like this do best when you can bring back that core creative element. Of course, few of the other characters survived the first three films to return anyway.

Some may wonder if jumping back into the world of Scream is a good or bad idea. The horror genre has changed considerably since the first Scream movie came out in 1996. Scream 3 alone is ten years old. The big money makers these days are franchise films like Saw and unexpected indie hits like Paranormal Activity. The closest films to what Scream was would be the recent Halloween reboots, and even that’s a stretch.

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For the past four years, Spike TV has been on the map of cable TV award shows with their annual Scream Awards, giving notice to genres and categories that all other award shows overlook. From comic books to horror films, the Scream Awards have made basic cable award shows fun for the rest of us.

The network just released their list of nominees for this year’s show, which have been chosen by their Advisory Board of Hollywood and Genre Leaders. On the board are known genre names such as Tim Burton, Wes Craven, Roland Emmerich, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Eli Roth, Zack Snyder, and more.

The voting begins today at Scream.Spike.com so check out the list after the jump. Be sure to tune into Spike TV on Tuesday, October 27 (10 PM-Midnight ET/PT) for the 2009 Scream Awards.

THE ULTIMATE SCREAM
-“Drag Me to Hell”
-“Let the Right One In”
-“Star Trek”
-“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”
-“Twilight”
-“Up”

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I’m not sure who exactly was waiting with baited breath for this, but whomever it was should be happy to read this post. To what am I referring? I’m talking about the announcement today that both David Arquette and Courtney Cox are signed up for another chapter in the Scream franchise which, at the moment, carries the clever title Scream 4.

According to Marc Malkin of E! Online, the duo are onboard the new film and, especially in the case of Arquette, thrilled to be doing it. “I fell in love with my wife on Scream, so the opportunity to bring [Dewey] back to life and for my wife to play that really bitchy character again, it’s just going to be really fun,” he said in the article.

Also according to Malkin, Kevin Williamson is busy working away on a script which apparently includes all the characters, even though Neve Campbell (currently seen in NBC’s The Philanthropist) has so far refused the idea of playing Sidney Prescott again. Of course, everyone involved wants Wes Craven to return to the director’s chair but so far, unlike Campbell, he’s not saying anything at all about returning.

Of all the people involved in Scream who might be excited for another installment (besides Arquette), I can’t think of anyone who probably needs it more than Kevin Williamson. After his huge success with projects like the first two Scream films, I know What You Did Last Summer and Dawson’s Creek, he seemed pretty much able to do anything he wanted.

Unfortunately, his star has faded after several less-than-successful film and TV projects like Hidden Palms and Cursed, so he’s probably ripe for a comeback and is looking for a way to make it happen. And what better way to do that then by going back to the material that made your career in the first place?