’90s horror fans rejoiced at the news that a sequel to the 1997 cult classic I Know What You Did Last Summer was in development and cheered even harder after hearing that O.G. stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. were planning a return to the slasher genre, reprising their roles as franchise heroes Julie James and Ray Bronson. (Alas, FPJ’s co-star and real-life wife Sarah Michelle Gellar likely won’t be returning to the franchise, as she says her character is “dead dead.”)
And it looks like things are really moving with the sequel, with screenwriter Leah McKendrick giving an update to Collider about the Jennifer Kaytin Robinson-directed flick. It seems like the fan-favorite summer horror franchise is in good, protective hands with the scribe, who told the outlet that her “love is so deep” for the original movie.
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.’ Not that anybody was gonna make it that, but you would get it, Perri. 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.
Though McKendrick was initially wary of taking on existing IP for the upcoming horror movie, after her Grease prequel got shut down last minute by Paramount Pictures, she said that meeting director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) calmed her nerves about the IKWYDLS project.
So I met with Jen. Jen is so cool, Jen is so smart. Jen 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 like me and you, I think you’re gonna be happy. I think you’re gonna get it.
The writer also jokingly said that, though the story will be updated for “the age of the internet,” the sequel will honor the original in that it’s about “hot people doing questionable things”:
[Laughs] I mean, it’s hot people doing questionable things, right? At its core, I think 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?…It’s just a popcorn, wild ride. It’s campy at times, Jennifer Love Hewitt is so hot, Freddie Prinze Jr. is so hot. Sarah Michelle [Gellar], Ryan [Phillippe], they’re so gorgeous. It’s like beautiful people behaving badly. You just can’t get enough of it. There’s a lot of that in this film.
There’s no word yet on when we can expect the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel in theaters, but we’re keeping our eyes on the 2024 movie schedule just in case. In the meantime, you can rewatch those “beautiful people behaving badly” by renting the original horror flick, as well as its 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, on Apple TV, Prime Video and other on-demand platforms.