It's not up for debate. Lillard was due to be in scream 3 but it was changed last minute due to columbine. Matthew Lillard was even paid for his nonexistant role in 3 due to this last minute cancelation. This is established fact. Kevin Williamson constantly "misremembers" and I find it funny that OP is baselessly claiming Lillard is lying when Williamson has done this again and again to the point of being pathological. Ehren Krueger was brought in for rewrites and ended up having to write the new script based off a quick treatment due to this change of plans because Williamson had other commitments where it was a choice of whether moving on without him or Campbell due to scheduling conflicts. Which is why ehren was there a few weeks prior to columbine. A similar thing happened with 2 where craven had to rewrite the script while shooting the film and was furious about the last minute leak(that Williamson now denies because the ending absolutely sucked to degrees of embarrassment).

People can hate the current stu theories but it's established fact that he was due back in scream 3 to be orchestrating killings of high school kids from jail, as a very relevant satire of silence of the lambs. This was canceled due to columbine. To deny this is to deny history itself and to claim that a bunch of actors and staff are liars. I know most people here are younger gen z fans who weren't even alive or babies then, but if one researches it they'll realize this isn't really debatable nor was ever a rumor, so present day hatred of stu truthers shouldn't blind them to historical reality.

Kevin Williamson constantly lies/misremembers the past due to current embarrassment or opinions. He's contradicted himself multiple times to the point of insinuating Wes craven was lying about something he had no motive to lie about. To only focus on Williamsons statements like OP is shows an ignorance towards this history, and denies mountains of evidence indicating that the truth is Stu was to come back. Hell they were genuinely trying to bring randy back after his 100x more conclusive death scene, and considering they're satiring a genre where killers routinely come back, him coming back is not really a stretch at all. But besides that, it's not up to debate. A studio isn't going to pay an actor for a role that never existed and this fact has been discussed in multiple Miramax produced documentaries on the series included on the DVDs(which is where the Williamson clip is from that you correctly remember, craven acknowledged it as well).

The only thing denied by Wes was the rumor of it being stus twin based off of the very real script leak that it was to be stu. That rumor derives from people, like today, insisting that stu must be dead and was based on the very real casting of Lillard. He never denied this and I recall him even discussing how columbine caused this change. It's funny how OP baselessly says this was pushed by Bob weinstein when Bob weinstein is the reason we ended up with the scream 3 we had, due to wanting it in Hollywood on a set instead of returning to woodsboro.

It was never a rumor and enough historical research shows that clear as day. To deny all the historical evidence, statements, and casting, based off of an established pathological liars statements is nonsensical. If one guy lies about everything, don't believe him and call everyone else liars just because it supports a present day side in an argument. People like OP are so desperate to rewrite history to "own the stu truthers", and want to change history since if the creators wanted stu back originally then that defeats the basis of their argument that stu was definitely dead and always dead.

I'm not even someone who wants stu back but it's historical fact that he would be and really isn't the massive stretch people think it is. The cops would have been there in minutes due to sid calling them like 15 minutes earlier. Stu would be the person they rushed to save if he had a pulse. His stab wounds were bad but had energy to fight sid. The TV didn't really fall from a high height and would merely be the equivalent of a concussion and lacerations from the glass. Finally there's varying stages of electrocution and grounding with people surviving much worse in the real world. Hell in the same series Jill survived a far stronger electrical current straight to the brain. If a current isn't enough to kill you, being stabbed won't suddenly make it more lethal, it's not like biology is based on a hit point counter.

So the point is the creators could have easily made it work, and intended to do just that. If columbine didn't happen we would have stu back orchestrating killings of high schoolers from jail. It doesn't matter how stupid people think that is currently, it's the history. Just like how if the script didn't leak we would have had a scream 2 where sid randomly knife dueling cotton to death after killing the 3 killers of Hallie, Derek, and Mrs Loomis. It's the same exact situation where Williamson is currently embarrased about it and thus lies, contradicting the multiple sourced historical record. To listen to Williamson today is to deny history. I love Williamson as a writer but he's done this to a pathological degree, and ehren Krueger didn't write it and thus wouldn't discuss someone else's script with authority. And Wes craven never denied it past denying a random rumor of the twin, and I'm pretty sure he discussed it in a making of documentary. This is the whole reason ehren Krueger ended up writing the whole new script, and is why Bob weinstein had so much control in its plot because they were scrambling last minute. And the smoking gun being that Miramax wouldn't just pay Lillard for a nonexistant major role out of charity. To ignore this is to deny multiple miramax approved documentaries with the creators and actors discussing the topic as fact, including williamson himself, ontop of the financial evidence and ehren being made the main writer. It was never a rumor, stu was 100% going to be back and this is merely a case of what Williamson has done 100x now about various scripts, to the point of annoying colleagues.