There is no movie franchise that is so old that a sequel is not possible. We’ve seen numerous projects from Blade Runner to Top Gun get sequels decades after their original movies, and so it maybe wasn’t that big a surprise to learn that slasher favorite I Know What You Did Last Summer is now set to get a new entry starring original cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. What was maybe a bit surprising was the rumor that another member of the I Know What You Did Last Summer cast, Sarah Michelle Gellar, might also be returning. This was surprising because Gellar’s character dies in the first movie.
To be fair, it’s maybe not that crazy an idea that Sarah Michelle Gellar could return. Her husband who was also in the original films is set to return, and as Gellar tells ET, she has another strong connection to the new project as she’s good friends with the project’s director. She explained…
That's funny, I heard that news as well. And one of my best friends [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
And it turns out that maybe rumors of Gellar’s return to I Know What You Did Last Summer weren’t entirely unfounded. The actress says that director, and Thor: Love and Thunder screenwriter, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson actually suggested the idea of her return to the franchise. It was Gellar who felt obligated to point out that her character is very dead and thus a return wouldn’t make much sense. She continued…
As I explained to Jennifer, I am dead. I am dead dead. On ice. She's like, 'Are you sure you're dead dead?' I'm like, 'It's soap dish dead. I don't have a head. You can't write for someone that doesn't have a head. I'm dead.'
In the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, Gellar played Helen Shivers, a friend of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character who is one of the final characters to die in this story. She gets slashed to death in an alley while her screams are drowned out by a passing 4th of July parade. Her body is eventually discovered, both slashed and frozen in ice, on the killer’s fishing boat. So yeah, she’s pretty dead.
Considering the success that the newly rebooted Scream has had, it’s not shocking to see I Know What You Did Last Summer getting the legacy sequel treatment as well. The original film in both series had the same screenwriter, and it was only after the success of Scream that Summer, which was an older script, actually got the green light. So this is basically happening for the second time. This project is in its very early stages but it will be interesting to see where this one goes and if fans are still on board.
