Angry Orchard has put Sarah Michelle Gellar back on the phone with Ghost Face, and this time the caller wants cider.
The 60-second spot went out this week alongside the brand’s limited-edition Scream Thriller Pack. Gellar plays herself. The phone rings. It goes about the way you would expect for someone who has taken this call before.
She has taken it before. In Scream 2, Gellar played Cici Cooper, the sorority sister left alone in the house with a cordless phone and a stranger asking questions, and she did not make it out of the sequence. Casting her as the woman who picks up in 2026 is the entire joke, and it is a good one.
What Is Actually in the Thriller Pack
The Thriller Pack is a 12-pack of 12-ounce cans at 5% ABV, split across four flavors: Mystery Caller, Caramel Apple Curse, Headless Pumpkin and Blood Orange. Mystery Caller is the new one, and the recipe has not been revealed, which is at least in keeping with a franchise built on not telling you who is on the other end. The box glows in the dark. Alongside it are 19.2-ounce collector cans of Crisp Apple and Imperial carrying Ghost Face artwork, the Imperial at 8% ABV.
Horror fans have met this pack before in a different mask. Last year’s Thriller Pack was a Friday the 13th collaboration with Jason Universe, timed to the series’ 45th anniversary, and per Dread Central three of this year’s four flavors carried over from it. Only the caller changed.
Ghost Face Comes With His Own Paperwork
The collaboration was announced on August 19, and the release carried a line from R.J. Torbert, Director of Licensing and Brand Enforcement at Fun World: “Fun World is proud to be part of this collaboration, and we’re excited to bring Ghost Face to fans and collectors in a whole new way as Halloween approaches.”
Fun World is the reason this deal is possible in the first place. The company owns Ghost Face as a costume property, which is why that trademark line trails along the bottom of every Scream press still, and why the character can end up on a cider can. The mask also came first: it was already a Fun World Halloween item when the original film’s production came across it, a piece of trivia that surprises people often enough that Snopes has run a fact-check on it.
Angry Orchard marketing director John Dorman put the brand’s side of it plainly in the same release: “Halloween is Angry Orchard’s favorite time of year, and every year we’re looking for new ways to make it more fun for our fans, who love horror just as much as they love hard cider. Ghost Face has been part of Halloween for decades, popping up where you least expect him, and now he’s found his way onto our ciders, too.”
Why 1997 Makes the Casting Land
Gellar had a year in 1997 that most actors never get. Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered in March. I Know What You Did Last Summer opened in October. Scream 2 arrived in December. Inside of nine months she became the face horror audiences still picture when somebody says the word “1997,” and she has never fully left the genre since, from The Grudge to Wolf Pack.
That is why a beverage tie-in is worth two minutes of your attention. Brand horror crossovers usually rent the mask. This one rented the victim, and asked her to answer.
There is one more wrinkle. In May 2025, promoting Pretty Hurts, Gellar told Entertainment Tonight that she had tried to get into Scream 7 and had been turned down, adding, “I’m waiting for my call.” Sixteen months later a call arrived. It was not from Spyglass.
The Thriller Pack is a seasonal, while-supplies-last release rolling out nationwide. Nobody involved has tied the spot to Scream 7, and nobody is pretending otherwise. It is a cider ad. It is also the best use of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s phone since 1997.
