a big time jump is not strictly necessary

Something occurred to me, they can do this story without it being in something like 2040.

Follow me if you will:

Bear in mind, we only see these characters every so often, and when we do, we don't spend a ton of time hearing about all the issues in their personal lives, we sort of see just enough to piece it together for ourselves.

I think we can agree Sidney wasn't married in 4. No wedding ring, no mention of any romance. So maybe Mark was in the picture, maybe they were loosely in touch and got back in touch after 4. 4 is set late 2011.

When we see her in Scream 5, set in late 2021, we see her with a stroller. We don't see inside the stroller, but I'm assuming there's just one child in there, and young enough to be in a stroller. She says to Dewey "I'm just trying to get a run in before I take the girls to school." Now, she doesn't specify a number, and yeah, the little one could be going to daycare or something she and Mark refer to as "school," but that wording makes me feel like there are at least two older girls, so three kids all together.

Now let's say that Sidney and Mark got together pretty much on the heels of 4. So. Daughter #1 could've been born say late 2012. So she'd be about 9 during the events of Scream 5, now 10 by #6. So, if we keep to aging the characters in real life, by the time #7 comes out, she should be about 13. So that is a little young. But if they make her about 17, that'd really only require a time jump of not even 5 years, which is really not much, so it could be more like 2030 as opposed to making it 2040 and putting Neve in old lady make-up.

Problem then is that would leave the youngest being not even 10 yet, and that's a tough age to utilize in horror. It's been done, but I don't care for it. You know they generally won't have the guts to kill a kid, and the action always then feels restrained because of course they don't want the kid actor to die of fright.

But I still think this would be a doable workaround so we don't have to jump too far into the future.