Scream Celebrates 30 Years With a Killer 4K Collector’s Set and Replica Ghostface Phone
Ghostface is calling again, and this time you can apparently keep the phone. Paramount is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Wes Craven’s Scream with a new limited-edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray Collector’s Set, packed with Woodsboro-themed memorabilia and headlined by a replica of the cordless telephone that helped make the film’s opening sequence one of horror’s most memorable.
The US release is scheduled for December 15, 2026, almost exactly 30 years after Scream opened in American cinemas on December 20, 1996. The two-disc package includes the film on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, together with a Digital copy, and is currently available to pre-order in the United States for $109.99.
The real attraction for collectors, however, is everything Paramount has packed around the movie. The set includes a replica cordless phone featuring iconic quotes from Scream, alongside a case file folder, suspect list file card, Polaroid suspect photographs and a newspaper clipping. Rather than simply putting the existing 4K presentation into another SteelBook or anniversary sleeve, Paramount has built the package around the murder mystery at the centre of the original film.
It’s the telephone that will inevitably receive most of the attention. Long before Ghostface became inseparable from that white mask, Scream introduced its killer as a voice at the other end of the line. Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker answering an apparently harmless call before being asked, “What’s your favourite scary movie?” provided the starting point for an opening sequence that completely changed the audience’s expectations of the film. Thirty years later, packaging a replica phone with the anniversary edition feels considerably more imaginative than throwing another plastic Ghostface mask into the box.
The other collectibles lean heavily into the mystery surrounding the Woodsboro murders. The case file folder, suspect list and photographs play on one of Scream’s greatest strengths: Ghostface wasn’t presented as an unstoppable supernatural monster. There was a person beneath the costume, everyone around Sidney Prescott was potentially suspicious, and figuring out the killer’s identity was as important as surviving the next attack. The newspaper clipping continues that evidence-file approach, effectively turning the Collector’s Set into a box of material from the Woodsboro investigation.
Thirty Years Since Scream Revived the Slasher
Paramount certainly has good reason to give Scream the deluxe treatment for its 30th birthday. By 1996, the extraordinary slasher boom of the late 1970s and 1980s had largely burned itself out. The famous franchises hadn’t completely disappeared, but the genre was nowhere near the commercial force it had been when seemingly every holiday, summer camp and suburban street was capable of producing its own masked murderer.
Kevin Williamson’s screenplay and Wes Craven’s direction helped change that by recognising something important: the audience knew the rules too.
Scream allowed its characters to talk about Halloween and horror conventions while simultaneously trapping them inside a genuine slasher film. It was funny and self-aware without reducing Ghostface to a parody, and its success demonstrated that there was still a substantial audience for slashers if the genre could evolve. Produced for around $14 million, the film went on to earn approximately $173 million worldwide.
Its success helped kick-start another cycle of youth-oriented horror. Scream 2 followed in 1997, while I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later became part of the late-’90s slasher resurgence. Ghostface also achieved something increasingly difficult in horror, becoming a new genre icon during a decade still dominated by characters created years earlier.
That history makes the 30th anniversary particularly significant. The original Scream didn’t merely begin a franchise that continues three decades later. It helped make slashers commercially fashionable again after several comparatively quiet years and introduced a new generation to a form of horror that many assumed had already had its day.
Paramount’s Collector’s Set therefore arrives at an appropriate moment to revisit the film that started it all. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan and Jamie Kennedy return to Woodsboro across the 111-minute original, while the physical extras turn the package into something designed specifically around the movie rather than another routine anniversary reissue.
The Scream 30th Anniversary 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Set will be released in the United States on December 15, 2026. With the film, Digital copy, Woodsboro evidence, suspect photographs and its wonderfully ridiculous replica cordless phone all inside, Paramount appears to have understood one of the most important rules of horror collecting.
Sometimes, you really should answer the phone.
