John Milton (Scream)

John Milton was a devious and greedy director who served as the Bigger Bad/secondary of Scream 3. He is the father of Roman Bridger, another sadistic director who took on the mantle of Ghostface and blames the rape of Maureen Prescott on his father. As such, Milton is one of the two characters who is solely responsible for the events of all four Scream films.

He was portrayed by Lance Henriksen.

Background
Milton became a famous Hollywood producer focused on the horror genre of cinema. Making fictional fictional films such as Amazombies, Space Psycho, Creatures of The San Andreas Fault, he had the star of the films, Maureen Prescott, raped by him and some of John's friends. John impregnated Maureen with Roman Bridger and she put him up for adoption. Roman's negligence from his mother and father caused him to become the sociopathic serial killer we know today.

However, years later, Milton began creating the Stab series based on the original Woodsburo murders caused by Billy Loomis and Stu Macher. The making of these films indirectly caused the events of Scream 2 to 4. The perverted, old director then became Roman's filmmaking mentor, unaware that his movie creating apprentice is his bastard son.

Scream 3
Milton's actions would later come to haunt him once Sidney Prescott, Maureen's daughter, become famous for surviving the killing spree Roman had started. Roman eventually ended up working for him as a means of getting revenge. Milton hadn't learned much from his misdeeds in the past, given he had blackmailed one of his actresses, Angelina Tyler, into having sex with him in order to get the part. Once Roman finally starts his own personal killing spree and murders the entire cast of Stab 3, he kidnaps Milton and holds him hostage in front of Sidney. He intends to kill him and frame Sidney for the murders. Milton begs for his life, with the promise of money, and even higher positions on the film and a "final cut", to which Roman replies: "I already have it", and then slices Milton's throat, killing him.

Trivia

 * Despite the fact that he is not a Ghostface killer, nor even a murderer, he is considered by fans as one of the most evil antagonists on the series due to gang raping Maureen Prescott. It is for this action that the events of the Scream series were truly put in motion. For this reason, he is the Greater Scope Villain of the entire film series.