The history of the Stab film franchise is a bloody mess! From murdered casts to prematurely shut-down productions that led to multiple versions of the same films, the Stab franchise has never shied away from drama. Through it all, though, it has always shown persistence.

The most important thing to remember is where these films come from: they were originally just a plot device used in the Scream films. Stab is not an actual film franchise. Well, it wasn’t. Not until StabMovies.com got involved!

The Stab films first premiered in Scream 2, where we got two brief glimpses at remade versions of scenes from the first Scream and learned that the movie was based on Gale Weathers’ book The Woodsboro Murders. It is also commonly forgotten that Gale wrote a book about Cotton and Sidney’s mother’s murder in the first Scream. No images of it had ever surfaced until Scream VI.

In Scream 3, we are on the set of the in-production film Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro. This version of Stab 3 marks the first time the storyline of a Stab film departs from the stories of the Scream films. In other words, Return to Woodsboro is not based on “actual” events, though it does continue the storyline from the previous two films and, one can assume, the storyline of Gale Weathers’ novels. Which brings us to our next point: we skipped a movie!

Stab 2, though never actually shown in a Scream film, also makes its debut in the form of a movie poster in the office and house of faux producer John Milton in Scream 3. The bonus features on the Scream 3 DVD would finally offer a glimpse at Stab 2, with a trailer made cheaply to fill the gap between the films. Most of it was well done, mixing footage from Scream 2 with newly shot footage, but a few minor mistakes were made, like the lack of Tori Spelling as Sidney and Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie as Gale Weathers.

Which brings us back to Stab 3. In Scream 3, the entire cast of Return to Woodsboro is murdered, shutting down production on that version but eventually inspiring a new version, Stab 3: Hollywood Horror, which was based on the “actual” events of Scream 3. Exhausting, right?!

When Scream 4 premiered in real life 10 years later, it was revealed that the Gale Weathers character had written seven books and that seven Stab movies had now been produced in total. This is also around the same time that StabMovies.com was founded. In fact, writer and director Joshua Patrick Dudley attended the premiere of Scream 4 in Hollywood, representing StabMovies.com.

StabMovies.com announced production on Stab 4 through Stab 7, skipping 1 through 3 because they would simply be poorly made remakes of the Scream movies. This created two versions of Stab 4, Stab 5, Stab 6, and Stab 7: the versions in the Scream movies and the StabMovies.com versions. When StabMovies.com was originally founded, we created our own mythology about how we took over production from Sunrise Studios, the studio responsible for the Stab movies in the Scream films, but all of those references have since been removed from the website.

StabMovies.com changed the title of its Stab 4 from Knife of Doom to Fresh Blood and started over with a whole slew of new characters. The storyline was basically a parody of the Scream movies with new characters, though clearly based on the main characters from the previous Stab films.

StabMovies.com dropped the Clock of Doom subtitle and the time-travel-filled storyline of Stab 5, instead bringing the audience into a new reality where StabMovies.com was the producer of the Stab franchise and someone was killing off the cast of Stab 4: Fresh Blood. Super meta. It is also important to note that the real reason our Stab 5 does not feature time travel is because the script was written before the release of Scream 4.

Stab 6: Ghostface Returns is the title of both versions of Stab 6, and a small part of the Scream version of Stab 6 can be seen in Scream 4. StabMovies.com’s Stab 6 is a direct sequel to our Stab 5 and puts the cast on the set of an in-production, Stab-themed reality competition show.

Stab 7 is the kicker. There are three different versions of Stab 7. Stab 7: Knife of the Hunter is the title of Scream’s version, one scene of which can be seen in Scream 4, and it is also the title of StabMovies.com’s first version of Stab 7. Production on StabMovies.com’s Knife of the Hunter was shut down after multiple production difficulties. Every scene that was filmed for Knife of the Hunter was released on StabMovies.com’s YouTube channel. A new version of Stab 7, simply titled Stab 7, had been in production for over two years before it was shut down as well. As with Knife of the Hunter before it, all of the scenes from Stab 7 were released on YouTube.

In 2020, StabMovies.com released a Stab reboot entitled simply Stab. Featuring many of its former stars and some new faces, the movie follows a new lead girl named Claire Matthews and her friends. This film also marks the introduction of a new killer, The Ghost. With the same costume but a new mask, The Ghost terrorizes Claire and her friends, picking them off one by one.

In the fifth Scream, we learn that in 2021, Stab 8 was released inside the Scream-verse, though it was simply titled Stab. It was not well received by fans in the Scream-verse and followed a storyline that had nothing to do with the previous films.

Stab 2, a sequel to the reboot, was released in 2022. Much like Stab 5, Stab 2 brings back the cast from the previous movie and enters reality, where the Stab reboot was just a movie and someone is trying to kill the cast.

Back in the Scream universe, Scream VI revealed that Gale was unable to sell the movie rights to her latest book, meaning Stab IX hasn’t happened… yet.

Annnnnd back to Stab:

Stab 3: Holiday Horror was released by StabMovies.com on October 1, 2023.

Stab 4: Knife of Doom was released by StabMovies.com on October 10, 2024. Stab 4 marks the first time StabMovies.com focused on Scream characters, making Gale Weathers the star of the franchise in this prequel film set in 1986.

Are you counting? That brings the total number of Stab films, including alternate versions, to 19! It is 18 if you do not count the unfinished Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro, and technically 16 if you do not count our two failed versions of Stab 7. If they were all real movies, it would be the biggest horror franchise in existence, ignoring Amityville!

Stab 5: Clock of Doom is up next from StabMovies.com and will pick up right where Stab 4: Knife of Doom left off!