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(via Empire Online, Collider, Filmshaft & Slashfilm)


Wes Craven and the Dimension Films team have started reaching out to young talent to join the cast of Scream 4.

Twilight’s Ashley Greene, Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere and Rory Culkin have all been offered roles, while Lake Bell is already in negotiations.

If they all sign, they’ll be joining returning regular stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, who are ready to show up, albeit in a slightly more limited capacity as they pass the torch on to the new cast.

Greene is wanted to play Jill, Campbell’s cousin and the heroine of the piece, while Panettiere would be her best pal, a big film nerd (always a requirement for the terminally self-aware slasher series). Culkin, meanwhile is being lined up as a guy competing for Greene’s love.

Bell, last seen in It’s Complicated, is likely to appear as a police officer who has a history with Campbell’s Sidney Prescott.

Director Craven and writer Kevin Williamson are apparently trying to keep the new script’s secrets away from the prying eyes of the Magical Internet, and part of the secrecy involves only giving actors and their agents the most basic character descriptions, according to the Heat Vision Blog.

The story is still unknown due to secrecy but the plan is for the film to “be seen as a passing of the baton to a new generation of slasher victims,” which emphasizes that, if nothing else, we can look forward to some of these young thespians getting hacked up.

Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven, who kicked off the series as writer and director, respectively, will resume their respective roles for this latest installment.

Here’s some of the other stuff we know about the film, or that has been widely reported:

* Scream 4 is being written concurrently with a script for a fifth film by Kevin Williamson.
* The movie will be set ten years later in Woodsboro, and is described as “an ensemble” which will introduce several new characters.
* Williamson has said that Scream 4 will reference manga comics, Asian ghost girl movies, PG-13 horror movies, vampire films, M. Night Shyamalan movies and even torture porn.

The shoot is planned to kick off this July in Michigan.

Scream 4 is set to open next year on April 15, 2011.