David Arquette also takes credit for Courteney Cox's infamous 'Scream' bangs.
David Arquette couldn't be more excited to reunite with his ex-wife, Courteney Cox, for Scream 5. ET spoke to the 48-year-old actor on Wednesday, and he talked about Cox recently officially announcing that she's reprising her Scream role as Gale Weathers.
Arquette announced in May he will also reprise his role as Sheriff Dewey Riley. Arquette told ET he still loves working with Cox, with whom he shares 16-year-old daughter Coco. The two actually met on the set of 1996's Scream and got married in 1999, though they separated in 2010. Their divorce was finalized in 2013.
"Well, we co-parent," he tells ET's Lauren Zima, about his still-close relationship with 56-year-old Cox. "So, we're in touch quite a bit. It's great. But we always love working together. She's an incredible actress, so it'll be fun to bring these characters back to life and see where they're at. ... Co-starring's the easy part."
He said that most importantly, they want the fifth film in the iconic horror franchise to live up to its legacy. Scream creator and director Wes Craven died in 2015, and Scream 5 will be helmed by directing duo Radio Silence, comprising Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.
"I just want them to be true to the characters, that's all that really matters to me," Arquette says about his dreams for married couple Gale Weathers and Sheriff Dewey Riley in the next installment. "True to Wes' vision and [writer] Kevin [Williamson's] vision. The filmmakers were fans of the original and it really inspired them. So, it's great to see that. I mean, the more I've been in this business and where I'm at now, whenever you can combine something you love... there's something magical that happens. And these guys have that sort of approach to horror films. They love the original series, and I think they want to do it justice."
Arquette also said the team was still working on getting Neve Campbell, who played heroine Sidney Prescott in the Scream films, onboard.
"We have to get Neve, that's the real thing," he notes. "She's the heart and soul of the Scream franchise, so to get Neve would be a really tremendous thing. Like, I've seen her at conventions and stuff and it's just almost like family. We all have gone through this experience together and it's -- we're all really sad about the loss of Wes."
"I would love for her to be a part of it," he adds. "I mean, she's such an important-- she's the heart and soul of it."
Arquette said they were hoping to get production going soon on Scream 5, though it was still a mystery when filming is going to start. One thing he's currently working on is growing out his character's memorable mustache.
"Oh my gosh, have grown the mustache out as we speak," he says. "Hopefully, [filming] happens soon or I'm gonna have a big mustache."
He also takes credit for Cox's infamous bangs in the film, which even she's poked fun at.
"The bangs were my fault," he says. "I have to admit, I was like, 'Oh, you should do a like, Bettie Page thing, you know, just like, a little. That was my fault. Totally, I'll take full responsibility. I mean they're, you know, a professional hairdresser's fault of course. And they didn't really do Bettie Page kind of really blunt bangs. Like, that's what the idea was. They tried to mess with them. You can't. You have to go fully in. You can't, like, halfway those kinds of things."
"We all wish that it never happened," he adds. "Unfortunately it lives forever on film. But I apologize to everyone out there. But she was a real good sport, she did some Instagram posts where she sort of cut her bangs and that really was fun."
These days, Arquette is busy promoting his new film, Spree, a dark comedy about a ride-share driver named Kurt Kunkle (Joe Keery) who's figured out a deadly plan to go viral on social media. The film is in theaters and On Demand starting Aug. 14.
"I learned a little bit about social media, but I'm still completely lost," Arquette says of working on the film. "It's not my generation, so I try to just keep one up just for, you know, promoting stuff and staying in touch with fans, but a far as all that goes, I really don't have a clue. But the character that Joe Keery plays in the film is also a character who doesn't know how to do it, but he did a lot of research on social media influencers that don't have a lot of followers, so they're writing, they're doing all these videos, they're doing unboxing videos and reviews, but only like four or five people are watching them, so it's like this strange world."
Arquette admits he himself doesn't quite know the right thing to say when advising his teenage daughter on social media.
"See, I've always been such an open book with my life, it's really hard for me to give advice about, you know, being subtle," he acknowledges. "But, you know, Coco for instance is 16. She's got her social media stuff, but she is very private about it. She just posts certain things, she doesn't like, over-post, she's not, like, completely attached. But I don't know, it's part of our reality now, so it's really important to kind of understand what people get from it, how it sort of helps them individualize themselves and come up with an understanding of who they are."
One platform he says he's not interested in joining is the youth-driven app Tik Tok.
"No. At some point you gotta like, check out and be like, 'This is all I got,'" he jokes. "I was talking to [Coco] about TikTok and I just didn't understand like, what is TikTok? And she's like, mainly I use it for music and humor, like, their algorithm gets them in touch with people of like-minded humor and musical tastes and then they kind of put it all on this stream and it makes it really accessible. It kind of helps expand her sense of humor, she said. I was like, that was interesting for me to find out."
Meanwhile, ET spoke to Campbell in May, and she definitely didn't shut down the possibility of reprising her beloved Scream role.
"The conversations are being had, that's for sure," Campbell said. "There was a lot of talk about it. I wasn't sure it was going to happen and I was approached six weeks ago, but the timing's not great right now, obviously. We're starting conversations, we're starting negotiations, but who knows how and when studios are going to open again."
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