There’s a new sequel to the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer and its 1998 follow-up I Still Know What You Did Last Summer coming our way, aiming for a July 18 theatrical release – and with that date right around the corner, we figured this was the right time to put together a list of Everything We Know About the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel. Here we go:
CREATIVE TEAM
The announcement that I Know What You Did Last Summer was getting a new sequel came out of nowhere in February 2023, when Deadline revealed that, following years of talk about a reboot and then a short-lived TV series being released through the Prime Video streaming service, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) and screenwriter Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.) were teaming up for a film that would bring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. back as the characters they played in the ’97 and ’98 films.
Deadline explained that the idea for the new film came from Robinson and McKendrick, who blew studio execs away when they pitched this idea for a sequel last fall especially given the recent success of the Scream franchise. That film was recently relaunched with original cast members returning and the idea of bringing back original cast members to draw in old school fans of the franchise while also adding fresh faces to relaunch the series was too good for the studio to pass up on. Another big factor was the recent success of Robinson’s Netflix pic Do Revenge, which was lauded for its throwbacks to late 90 pics like Cruel Intentions and was something execs knew Robinson could tap in to when developing the story. The studio also saw it important to not reboot the franchise but do a sort of “passing of the torch” type of sequel where original cast members are brought back while a new generation cast members are added to the ensemble, similar to films like Creed or another 90s horror classic Scream.
McKendrick had been working on a Grease prequel called Summer Lovin’ at Paramount that was cancelled, and after that experience she thought she was done working on properties she didn’t own. Then the opportunity to pitch for a new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel came up. She told Collider, “The reason I was able to go in is because it was a Sony film, I have a relationship with Sony, and the producers I also had a relationship with. And I found out it was (Robinson) that was gonna be directing it. And more than anything I thought, ‘Because my love is so deep for I Know What You Did Last Summer, I have to protect it. I must protect it. I can’t let this be, like, cheesy and a cash grab.’ … When it’s like they’re rebooting something that you love so deeply from your childhood, you’re like, ‘I know how we can do this and not make it cheesy, and it can stay true to the mythology, and we can bring back the OGs, and it can be a culmination.’ You have all these ideas. So I met with (Robinson). She is so cool, she is so smart. She is just, like, down to try some edgy, cool-ass shit. And I was like, ‘I’m gonna give this my best shot,’ and I pitched. All they told me was they were like, ‘We need to know the accident, the event that kicks it off, and know who the killer is.’ Because they knew that if I had to do a whole fleshed out process of pitching, I was probably just not gonna do it because my heart had been so broken by the reboot game. But when they told me that, I was like, ‘I know what I’m gonna do.’ And no spoilers, but I will say that I think if you’re an OG fan, I think you’re gonna be happy. I think you’re gonna get it.“ She went on to say that Robinson is “thinking spectacle” for this sequel is ready to “knock out some really complicated ideas” while ensuring the film is a wild, fun ride. She said the story deals with “beautiful people behaving badly,” just like the original film, and “it really reckons with some big ideas about hero and villain, right and wrong, how your skeletons come back to haunt you. And in the age of the internet and the age where fame is such a revered concept, the creation of TikTok and social media, who is Julie James in a world where there are no secrets anymore?“
McKendrick’s script received some rewrites from Robinson and journalist Sam Lansky.
CAST
Although Sony went ahead and said that Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. were involved with the project in the announcement, that wasn’t actually the case. Hewitt and Prinze hadn’t even been contacted yet at the time! And it took quite a while for them to close their deals – Prinze didn’t officially sign on to reprise the role of Ray Bronson until September of 2024, and Hewitt’s deal to play heroine Julie James again wasn’t signed until December of 2024, the same month filming began.
The long wait for Hewitt came down to scheduling concerns, as she has been working on the TV series 9-1-1. She was always eager to be in the movie, though. In an interview with Coming Soon, Hewitt said, “The idea of returning to Julie James is really exciting for me. It’s scary. I think on the personal level of being like, ‘what are people gonna think of the 45-year-old version of Julie James?’ I think ’cause I’m a woman and human, that part of it makes me a little nervous. But playing her again would be an honor. I think I feel excited to show or see what she’s been up to and how she has changed, and what she still holds onto from that infamous night on the road.“
For this one, Hewitt and Prinze are joined in the cast by Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer), model / musician Gabbriette Bechtel (making her feature film acting debut), Austin Nichols (The Day After Tomorrow), Lola Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty), and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story). Hewitt and Prinze are not the leads this time around, so some of the actors on that list will be getting more screen time than they will.
Prinze confirmed that he and Hewitt are not the leads during an interview on the Scale Talk Podcast with David Miniatures. He said, with thanks to our friends at Bloody Disgusting for the transcription, “[Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] just took such good care of Love’s character, Julie James, and my character, Ray Bronson. They’re not the leads of the movie by any stretch of the imagination. She made them such a powerful pushing forward of the other cast. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s the Ray and Julie movie that we deserve.’ That doesn’t even make sense. That guy’s dead. So it has to be new generation. And the way she sort of laces us in there with them is just beautifully done. The script is wonderfully written.” Another thing Prinze confirmed in that quote is the fact that Ben Willis, the killer from the first two movies, is dead.
If you’re wondering how Julie and Ray are still alive, when the last scene of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer seemed to imply they were being killed off… well, it sounds like that scene is being written off as a nightmare, just like the last scene in the first movie. Robinson said, “So the way that I’ve approached the franchise is that I feel like those final scenes in the first two movies live outside the canon, because in the first movie she gets attacked through the shower, through the glass door, and in the second movie, she gets pulled under the bed. So they’re both alive and well, and what I will say is that we have continued the tradition in our film.“
The events of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer are canon, but it’s not clear if that film’s cast member Brandy Norwood will be making an appearance. Norwood has been open about the fact that she would like to be in the movie, and confirmed that she had talked to the filmmakers.
At one time, Robinson’s Do Revenge star Camila Mendes was attached to the project, but had to drop out to work on Masters of the Universe. It seems Mendes was replaced by Wonders – and Robinson confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that she also tried to get Mendes’s Do Revenge co-star Maya Hawke into the movie, but couldn’t work out the schedule. Sarah Michelle Gellar was another Do Revenge cast member that the director couldn’t get into this movie… since she played a character who was killed off in the first movie. Robinson said, “I actually tried to get Maya Hawke, and we couldn’t work it out with schedules. I mean, the big one (was Sarah Michelle Gellar). I tried relentlessly, and she’s dead. I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead. I tried to pitch some crazy s— too. I was like, ‘What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?’ And Sarah’s like, ‘I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but what if?’ And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’“
Since she’s married to Prinze and considers Robinson to be a good friend, Gellar was on the fringes on the movie anyway. She told People, “My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity. So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.“
During production, Wonders told People that working on the movie was “really fun, and the cast is incredible. We filmed partially in Australia and now we’re finishing up in L.A.” She described director Robinson as “a genius” and mentioned that, in addition to working with Hewitt and Prinze, she also had the chance to meet Gellar. She said the trio are “icons, and we’ve gotten to meet all of them. They’re absolute legends and live up to all my expectations, which is a lot.” Working on the movie has been “incredible” and “so surreal” – and when she acted in scenes with Hewitt and Prinze, “I had to act with my contacts out, ‘cause I couldn’t focus while seeing them act in front of me.“
STORY
In case you need a refresher, the first I Know What You Did Last Summer was directed by Jim Gillespie from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson that was inspired by a Lois Duncan novel. The film has the following synopsis: A year after running over a fisherman and dumping his body in the water, four friends reconvene when Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) receives a frightening letter telling her that their crime was seen. While pursuing who he thinks is responsible for the letter, Barry (Ryan Phillippe) is run over by a man with a meat hook. The bloodletting only increases from there, as the killer with the hook continues to stalk Julie, Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.). I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was directed by Danny Cannon from a screenplay by Trey Callaway. The synopsis: A year after killing vengeful hit-and-run victim Ben Wills (Muse Watson), who gutted her friends with an iron hook, college student Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is still shaken by the experience. When her roommate, Karla (Brandy), wins a vacation for four to the Bahamas, she plans to bring along her boyfriend, Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer), attractive Will (Matthew Settle) and Julie. At the resort, Julie starts receiving threatening notes and realizes Ben is still alive.
Now, here’s the new sequel’s synopsis: When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer… and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.
Prinze told Entertainment Weekly, “Catching up with Ray, you see how that has shaped him into the position he’s in now. He loves his town and not everyone else does, in his view, and he’s a little grumpier with the way the world has treated him since [the 1997 Southport Massacre]. So he has gone through a lot, and I don’t know if he’s dealt with it the way the modern man deals with stuff, you know what I mean? He’s a guy from the ’90s like myself, so I think he’s probably bottled up a lot more of those feelings we’ve talked about.” He went on to reveal, “Ray has a bar that he runs. It’s kind of where he’s at in his life now. He’s not the active fisherman that he thought he was going to be. He’s managing and owning a spot of his own and trying to keep it afloat.“
Robinson added, “I came to this originally wanting to dig into: if this thing had happened to you, how would that shape you, and what person do you become after it? So really wanting to look at both Ray and Julie and say, ‘Okay, how did this thing shape both of them and where would they be today?’ … Without giving too much away, they both moved through the trauma and became fully realized adults, and I think had very different ways of dealing with what happened to them. So that is definitely the main source of conflict between them: how do you move through this? And now that people have way more tools, do you use all the tools, or do you not? Do you push it down and repress it and just keep moving? (The new film is) about both Ray and Julie finding catharsis through helping the younger cast in this film. I think they both have a lot of emotional stuff that they’ve kind of put Band-Aids on, and those Band-Aids are ripped off by our younger cast, and this movie is definitely about them. Each of them has a person in the younger cast that they are connected to, and it is about them helping all five of these kids move through this. And through doing that, I think they actually are able to find closure and release and are able to move forward in a way that they never would have had they not experienced this with this younger group.“
MARKETING
Several images from the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel have made their way online in recent months, as you can see throughout this article (and there are more of them below). The first trailer was shown at the CinemaCon event at the beginning of April, then made its way online at the end of the month:
The trailer indicates that the violence in this film will be more brutal than what we’ve seen in the previous films, and that’s exactly what Robinson was going for. Talking to Collider, she said, “I can’t tell you anything about the Fisherman! That ruins all the fun! I guess I can tell you one thing — this time, The Fisherman is a lot more brutal.” She said something similar to People: “It is not a serious movie. It is a really fun, popcorn summer event,” and yet, the horror is “ratcheted up to a hundred in this — it’s much more brutal.“
A poster has also been unveiled, as you can see right here:
And that’s everything we know about the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel… for now. Are you looking forward to this movie? Let us know by leaving a comment.
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