‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ To Get New Sequel
Everyone still knows what you did last summer.
Over 25 years since the original film debuted in theaters, Sony is reportedly looking to restart the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise with a new sequel featuring several of the first film’s surviving characters. (Not to spoil the movie, but, uh, those would be the ones played by Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.)
The first film followed four friends — the other two were played by Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe — who accidentally hit a stranger with their car one night. They try to dispose of the body but the victim survives. A year later they begin getting threatening notes that read “I know what you did last summer.” The film, which was written by Scream’s Kevin Williamson from a novel by Lois Duncan, did well enough to get a sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That was followed by a second, direct-to-video sequel, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, which did not feature the original stars.
And now, it looks like the story will continue in yet another sequel. According to Deadline, the series’ stars are “in talks” to return for the film, which will be directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and written by Leah McKendrick, who collaborated on the concept for this legacyquel...
While McKendrick is penning the pic, the idea for the new film came from Robinson and McKendrick, who blew away studio execs 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 castmembers to draw in old-school fans while also adding fresh faces to relaunch the series was too good for the studio to pass up.
This is the second attempt in recent years to revive the series. In the fall of 2021, Amazon released a TV version of I Know What You Did Last Summer. The show wound up getting canceled after a single season on their streaming service.
Given that I Know What You Did Last Summer’s success was helped greatly by the fact that it followed Scream to theaters, it seems only fitting that now that Scream is back up and running as a franchise, I Know What You Did Last Summer would be too. That title’s gonna be a problem, though. I Know What You Did Like 25 Summers Ago doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.