There are a lot of upcoming horror movies on the way, but I’ve been particularly excited to know more about what’s in store for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie, especially after finding out Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James is officially returning alongside Freddie Prinze Jr’s Ray Bronson. After recently learning that handling the return of Julie didn’t come without some back and forth from its new writers, my excitement has only been elevated.
On behalf of CinemaBlend, I had the chance to attend the trailer release event for I Know What You Did Last Summer over the weekend at Sony Pictures Studios in L.A. While there, we were among the first to watch the brand new trailer (which you can watch below) along with an insightful conversation with the filmmakers and new cast members.
Wasn't that a blast?!? Now here’s what writer/director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson had to say about the writing process with co-writer Sam Lansky, at least when it came to addressing the first official sequel to the O.G. slasher. In her words:
Sam and I are both huge fans of the franchise, to the point where we once got in a heated argument about I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, to the point where I was like, ‘We should just go to bed. We should just go to bed and we'll do this tomorrow.’
Robinson, who previously directed Netflix’s Someone Great and Do Revenge, shared that she and Lansky are such superfans that wanted to do justice to the franchise that they really got into it while watching the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer together. At the time, the writers actually went to the franchise's key setting of Southport, North Carolina to experience the town for real.
Speaking to the subject of authenticity, Robinson continued, saying that Lansky was more invested in sticking to the reality of the sequel, while Robinson had more of a joyous return in mind. As she put it:
I was on the side of it should be really, really, really fun, and you just want to have a lot of fun. And like, yes, there's trauma and there's backstory and it's canon. It was never not about not being canon. But Sam was like, ‘If this happened to you, you would be traumatized forever, Julie James.’ And so it was just like us talking about how traumatized Julie James should be in this movie versus how traumatized a human being would be in real life.
So basically, they got really deep into Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character Julie James, and how they should logistically approach the character nearly 30 years after her last appearance, without originally seeing eye to eye. And hey, they both have a point!
As Robinson shared, she kind of wanted Julie to be a bit unserious and remain the “fun” character that fans fell for to begin with, while her co-writer had other ideas. As Lansky added:
As we got deeper and deeper, I was like, ‘Man, Julie! If this happened to you not once, but twice? And this guy turns out to be the son of the guy from last time, I would just never trust anyone ever again. And, that's how we should write Julie.' And ultimately, I think we came to a really healthy compromise in terms of how traumatized and shaped by what happened to her Julie is.
It does have me wondering how the present day Julie James will be like after their “heated argument” on the topic, but nonetheless, I’m excited to see her tackle the character after so long. I get both sides, because I want Julie to match the spirit of the original, but I also think Sam has a really good point, that it would be odd if the movie doesn't get into how this would affect someone.
While we got a glimpse of her in the first trailer, this new one shows that she’ll be super involved with the whole I Know What You Did Last Summer cast in trying to take down the mysterious fisherman killer on his new reign of terror. I love that the trailer has her saying a callback line from the original, which totally makes me want to rewatch the original, while not giving away a lot of the key plot beats.
This is definitely one of those 2025 movie releases I’m marking my calendar for. It’ll reach theaters on July 18.
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