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After MTV announced that the network’s Scream adaptation had been picked up to series, news spread that the show did not have the rights to use the iconic Ghostface mask that is synonymous with the franchise. You may have been one of the many fans scratching your head wondering: How is this Scream without the Scream mask?! EW has the scoop:

In an effort to subvert expectations and create a wholly unique experience, the series has created a mask of its own. Similarly inspired by the Edvard Munch painting, the show’s mask will have a more, ahem, organic feel. (Early word is that it’ll be made of flesh, but TPTB are still developing it.)

“It’s a darker, almost more grounded, evolved version of the mask,” says Mina Lefevre, MTV’s senior vice president and head of scripted development. “It’s something we’re constantly talking about. How did that mask become that mask? What’s its purpose? How did it evolve? If the Scream movie mask was the more plastic version, for a lack of a better description, this one is a more organic looking and frankly darker version.”

The high school-set series will follow a slew of not-yet-slain students: shy popular girl Emma (Willa Fitzgerald), artsy loner Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus), computer geek Noah (John Karna), all-American athlete Will (Connor Weil), ferocious socialite Brooke (Carlson Young), and mysterious new kid Kieran (Amadeus Serafini). The show also stars Joel Gretsch as Sheriff Clark Hudson (Kieran’s father) and Tracy Middendorf as Maggie.

Lefevre—who insists not using Ghostface had nothing to do with rights issues— promises that the spirit of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s films are intact. “Scream was incredibly iconic, but we wanted to reinvent that for TV while of course keeping all the main elements that made it so iconic, including a mask, but also the soapy teen stories, pop culture humor, the scares and the killer,” she says. “We’re tonally walking that line, yet delivering the scares in a significant way. The mask was a big discussion creatively. We wanted to get a nod and a wink to what the original was, but we definitely wanted to make it more on par with what horror is now, which is darker.”

Still, that doesn’t rule out never seeing the Ghostface mask. “It’s a little preliminary, obviously because we haven’t even started our writers room, to say that we will never see that other mask or not,” she says.

Scream is expected to premiere in 2015.