Scream 6 directors explain Ghostface's controversial shotgun moment

gamesradar.com:

When the first trailer for Scream 6 was unveiled, many longtime fans of the franchise had opinions on one particular moment. It wasn't Gail's tense phone call with the villain or Hayden Panettiere's anticipated return as Scream 4's Kirby; it was the fact that one scene sees the newest Ghostface use a shotgun against their victims. 

In light of the backlash, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett tell SFX that they deliberately set out to "raise eyebrows" by having the knife-wielding killer use a very different kind of weapon – and tease a more competent, more terrifying kind of antagonist.

"We don't want it to be safe. We don't want it to be boring. We want it to be fun and to raise eyebrows," Bettinelli-Olpin reveals in the magazine's latest issue, which features The Mandalorian on the cover (opens in new tab). "When we heard 'Ghostface in New York, and he has a shotgun' it was like: 'What?!' The two feelings of 'What are we doing?' and 'We have to do it!' are often intrinsically tied and that was a perfect example of that."

Though we've seen most Ghostfaces use guns in the series before, from Billy Loomis and Stu Macher to Jill Roberts, they've always been unmasked by that point, which is why Scream 6's Ghostface, stealing a shotgun off of a convenience store owner in full costume and using it against him stands out so much in the teaser. For the filmmakers, this key difference simply highlights how our heroes aren't dealing with an amateur copycat this time around.

"There are a ton of fun, wonderful, classic Ghostface moments, but it's not the pratfalling Ghostface," Gillett adds. "For this to be scary and to achieve a level of visceral tension, we wanted to put the character more in the real world. If