A year ago it was announced that a sequel to the 1997 cult horror classic I Know What You Did Last Summer was in development with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson set to direct. Now we’ve got a new update from writer Leah McKendrick who recently joined Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff for an episode of Collider Dailies in celebration of her feature directorial debut, Scrambled. The original film starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. and grossed $125.3 million from a $17 million budget, with a sequel quickly being released the next year. However, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was poorly reviewed and only grossed $84 million on a budget of $24 million. A direct-to-video sequel, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, was released in 2006.
While discussing the development of the upcoming sequel, McKendrick revealed she actually hadn’t met Robinson prior to signing on to the project. “No, we actually did not know each other,” she explained. “I was a fan of hers. I really love Someone Great. I think it’s an incredible modern romance. And I just love the IP. I love the original film. I grew up on it as well. And I was really missing horror because my first film, M.F.A., this small indie, is a rape-revenge film. I grew up on horror. That is my heart, and I feel like sometimes people don’t believe me or something, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m a chick.”
“I don’t know if it’s because I write a lot of rom-coms. I don’t know if it’s about the way that I look. I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “But it’s like I always have to keep knocking on that door, like ‘I love horror films. I wanna do horror films!’ Everybody’s like, ‘That’s so awesome. Here’s a rom-com to write. That’s amazing. Go write this cute rom-com for teenagers.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I wanna cut heads off. I wanna have blood all over the walls!'”
Leah McKendrick Is Protective of the ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Franchise
McKendrick confessed, prior to signing on, that she had been turned off by the prospect of big-budget studio intellectual properties, having seen her Grease prequel killed at the last moment. But when the prospect of reawakening a beloved horror series from her formative years landed on her desk, she couldn’t say no to a meeting. Then finding out Robinson was in charge, and thus meeting her, was the final straw as she broke her word to avoid dreaded IP!
Without wanting to delve into spoilers for the film, McKendrick confessed that, as an original fan of the series, she was delighted by the thrills and spills they’ve cooked up for the sequel. She told Nemiroff:
“So I had kind of said, ‘I’m really burnt out on the studio, big IP.’ They had killed my ‘Grease’ prequel at Paramount, and I was like, ‘I can’t build from the ground up over many years for an IP that I don’t have ownership of at all.’ And then my team called me and they’re like, ‘So we know you said you didn’t want to do any of that anymore, but they are thinking of bringing back ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’,’ and I was like, ‘Maybe one more!’ 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 Jen 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.’ 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.
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.”
Part of McKendrick‘s excitement for the project is rooted in the thrill of working alongside Robinson. During Collider Dailies, McKendrick shared high praise for the young filmmaker, insisting that Robinson is easily the best director for the project.
“Jen knows what she’s doing,” she stressed. “We worked hand-in-hand molding it from my pitch. We went in, and we just got our hands dirty and dug in. She is not afraid of certain things that I would be afraid of as a director. Like, she’s thinking spectacle. Because she’s an experienced director, she’s ready to knock out some really complicated ideas and big hills. She is unafraid, I will tell you that. It is gonna be a wild fun ride. I’m really excited.”
Leah McKendrick Promises the Sequel Will Remember Why Fans Loved the Original
Lastly, Nemiroff asked McKendrick about the ideas behind the film, and how she and Robinson planned to bring something new to the table while honoring what had come before it. The good news for fans? She knows exactly what we all want to see from a horror film like this — beautiful people behaving atrociously. McKendrick said:
“Oh my gosh, that is so the million-dollar question. [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? I already feel like I’m saying too much, but I think at its core, if you watch the original, I don’t know if you’ve watched it recently, I obviously watched 8 million times while working on it, but it’s fun . 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.”
No plot details on the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel are available as yet, nor is there a concrete release date, but stay tuned to Collider for more updates when they become available.
via Collider