When the first “Scream” movie came out in 1996, the main thing that made the Neve Campbell-starring horror film seem like a real shot in the arm to the flailing genre was how well it handled all the obvious aspects of traditional fright films.

Referencing goosebumps-inducing cliches from late 1970’s movies like “When a Stranger Calls” and “Halloween,” Wes Craven’s exercise in postmodern terror felt like something audiences were already familiar with and yet had never encountered before.

One of the details that really worked was the simple elongated open-mouthed design for the killer's “Ghostface” mask, which somehow managed to look silly and terrifying in it mass-produced simplicity.

About a dozen years and three sequels later, the “Scream” franchise is getting the MTV treatment.

The series, which starts up on June 30, will, like the original, follow a set of small town teenagers that are being terrified by a killer in a mask. Although the story may sound the same, the mask will be different and for a good reason.

As Jaime Paglia, one of the show’s executive producers, contends, the original mask is just too iconic of an image and would set the wrong tone for the reboot.

“If you were to have that mask in a television series, but you weren’t following any of the characters [from the original], I believe that would be misleading the audience," Paglia said to Entertainment Weekly.

The slightly more human looking mask is spooky enough, and pays tribute to classic horror bad guys of the past. As executive producer Jill Blotevogel says, “It evokes some of the Jason hockey mask and the white Michael Myers mask, but it’s still first and foremost evocative of the Scream mask. It’s sort of a reinvention while also paying homage.”

King of the horror genre Wes Craven, who has come on board as an executive producer for the reboot inspired by his beloved set of scary movies, is fond of the new mask too, saying, "The new mask is cool and scary and takes the series into a new direction. It also ties into the story, which I won’t give away.”