Matthew Lillard is heading back to Woodsboro.

The Scooby-Doo star has officially joined the cast of Scream 7, Entertainment Weekly has learned. Lillard seemingly celebrated the news with a cryptic Instagram video featuring one of the most iconic quotes from the original Scream: “My mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me!” 

In the original 1996 meta-slasher, Lillard played Stu Macher, one of the two sociopathic teens acting as the masked Ghostface killer, alongside Skeet Ulrich‘s Billy Loomis. Stu seemingly met his end when Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) smashed a TV onto his head.

Lillard previously cast doubt on returning to the franchise during a 2023 interview with EW. “I don’t think so. I don’t think so,” the actor said when asked about playing Stu again. “I mean, look, with what they’re going through right now, I have no idea where that goes. If there’s a world where it makes sense, then sure. I mean, they keep mentioning it, they keep tip-toeing around the outside.”

Lillard also expressed a desire to settle the matter once and for all. “I hope they put it to bed one way or the other,” he said. “I can’t walk down the street without somebody asking me if I’m going to be in episode 35 or whatever.”

Stu is one of the only characters from the original Scream who has never appeared in any subsequent movies in the series. Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette all played key roles in each of the original three films, and reprised their roles in 2011’s Scream 4 and 2022’s Scream (and Cox also recurred in 2023’s Scream VI). Jamie Kennedy and Liev Schreiber also reprised their supporting roles in Scream 2 and Scream 3. Even Stu’s partner in crime, Billy, returned to the franchise despite his death in the first movie, appearing as a ghost haunting his daughter Sam (Melissa Barrera).

Scream 7 will see Campbell return to the franchise after skipping Scream VI. She’ll be joined by Cox, as well as Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown, whose characters were introduced in 2022’s Scream and returned for Scream VI.

EW also recently learned that Scott Foley, who played the murderous filmmaker Roman Bridger in Scream 3, has also joined the cast of Scream 7. Since Roman’s fate seems pretty final at the conclusion of the threequel (he’s shot in the head), it’s not immediately clear how Foley is coming back into the fold — but the combination of Foley and Lillard suggests that perhaps that the film will see Sidney become haunted by ghosts of Ghostfaces past. After all, there’s already a precedent for dead Ghostfaces returning in characters’ memories.

It’s also possible that Stu never died in the first place. In the last Scream movie, Mindy Meeks-Martin (Brown) alluded to a theory that Lillard’s character survived the TV smash.

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Lillard previously said that he was supposed to play the primary antagonist in a prior sequel. “I was supposed do Scream 3,” he told Vulture in 2022. “I got paid for 3. Not really well, but I ended up getting paid for something I didn’t do because the idea was that I’d be running high-school killers from jail.”

Little is known about Scream 7‘s plot, though we do know that Joel McHale will portray Sidney’s husband, and Isabel May will play her daughter. Other new cast members include Mckenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, Asa Germann, Sam Rechner, Anna Camp, and Mark Consuelos. Two key cast members from the previous two Screams definitely won’t be returning, though: Barrera was fired from the franchise after voicing support for Palestine on social media, and her on-screen sister Jenna Ortega exited the movie shortly thereafter.

Directed by original franchise architect Kevin Williamson and written by Guy Busick, Scream 7 will hit theaters on Feb. 27, 2026.