The first take on Stab 3 was set to be subtitled Return to Woodsboro, and would have been the first film in the series based on a semi-original story. Cotton Weary was set to play himself and get killed in the opening scene. Next, an original character named Sarah Darling (played by fictional actress Candy Brooks) would be murdered just before taking a shower, in a nod to Casey Becker’s death from the original Stab.

Gale Weathers was also going to get killed in this entry, along with a new character named Ricky Wafford, played by fictional actor Tyson Fox and inspired by the Scream character Randy Meeks. (Whew, that’s a lot of layers! Post-modernism!) Jennifer Jolie returned as Gale in Stab 3, though her co-stars Tori Spelling and David Schwimmer both left the series at this point. Young actors Angelina Tyler and Tom Prinze were brought in to take over as Sidney and Dewey, respectively, with Tyler beating out 50,000 hopefuls in a much-hyped talent search for the new Sidney.

For whatever reason, Milton passed up Rodriguez’s services this time around (or maybe this time Rodriguez couldn’t make the scheduling work) and brought hot young music video director Roman Bridger to take over Stab 3. Sadly, it turns out, Bridger was the real, unwanted, secret half-brother of Sidney Prescott, who had never gotten over the emotional trauma of being rejected by Maureen years ago. He’d been secretly orchestrating the Ghostface killings from the very start, mentoring Billy Loomis as part of a fiendish revenge plot. Before being shot and killed by Dewey Riley, Roman managed to execute Christine Hamilton, Cotton Weary, Sarah Darling, Tom Prinze, Angelina Tyler, Tyson Fox, Jennifer Jolie, and John Milton. The massacre shut down production of Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro permanently and inspired Gale Weathers’ next book, Hollywood Horror.

Three versions of the script are known to have been written.

The film starts out with Cotton Weary appearing as himself, getting murdered by Ghost Face early in the movie. Next, Candy Brooks was brutally murdered before taking a shower, similar to Casey Becker in the first Stab installment. Gale, Sidney and Dewey reunite to find the killer and put an end to this killing spree. In one of the script versions, Gale was murdered next by Ghost Face.

Ricky Wafford joins the group, being an homage to Randy Meeks, but dies getting stabbed in the head by a pair of scissors. According to Jennifer Jolie, Gale is the murderer in Stab 3; if that claim is true, it's unknown whether this applies to all of the script versions or only the one she possessed at the time.