On Saturday evening, in a screening room on the Sony Pictures lot, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson screamed into a microphone: “What are you waiting for?!”
Well, not only Robinson. She had a chorus of journalists and influencers backing her up — all yelling out to a projectionist who was waiting to roll the new trailer for the summer slasher, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
For the uninitiated, the exclamation is a callback to the battle cry from Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James in the 1997 horror flick about a quartet of teens who, after a deadly car accident, get stalked by a vengeful, hook-wielding fisherman. This summer, Robinson revives the franchise with a new installment, which follows another group of young people from Southport who, again, crash their car on a dark, windy road and then are haunted by the consequences of their killer mistake. Original stars Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprise their roles as James and Ray Bronson, whose survival skills — and residual trauma — will hopefully prove useful to this next generation (Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, Gabriette Bechtel and Tyriq Withers) because everyone isn’t going to make it out alive.
The new footage reveals more about the movie’s plot, which begins at a pre-wedding celebration for Cline’s Danica and her fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), where she receives a note with the titular threat. (Cue the flashback to the scene of the crime, on July 4, 2024, when the clique commits vehicular homicide, then covers it up.) Those who watched the first trailer know that Wyatt is not long for this world — he gets harpooned and then hooked by the Fisherman while Danica is in the bath — but this clip emphasizes that there are more kills to come. And, to survive, they’re going to need some help.
Enter Ray, then Julie.
“You can’t run. You can’t hide,” Julie says, giving Wonders’ Eva some practical advice. “Get them before they get you.” (The question is, who is “them?” because, as the trailer teases, it seems someone in the group is actually a killer.)
In the two-and-a-half-minute trailer, eagle-eyed fans will spot some callbacks to the original movie and recognize some of Southport’s more infamous locations, like the Croker Queen pageant hall, where Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers begins her epic chase scene with the Fisherman in the original movie. (These kids have their fair share of fight scenes and scream queen moments, too.)
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The clip ends with a final thrill — a close-up of Julie, gravely asking, “What are you waiting for?”
As the screen cut to black and the guests cheered their approval at the launch event, Robinson was joined by the film’s stars Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Gabriette Bechtel and Tyriq Withers, as well as co-writer Sam Lansky to discuss all the stabs, scares and screams to come when the movie hits theaters on July 18.
Becoming a scream queen (or king) is harder than it looks, though. “I dare you all to go home and try to scream for as long as you can. It’s harder than you think,” Wonders told the crowd during the Q&A, moderated by author and podcaster Danny Pellegrino. “The ‘scream queens’ that have come before me, I have the utmost respect for. I think all of us have a hearty scream in here, but following in the footsteps of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, the two of them have amazing screams!”
Capturing the magic of the original film was a challenge Robinson was ready to accept. The “Someone Great” and “Do Revenge” filmmaker was such a huge fan of the franchise that when Sony called to ask if she had a take on it, she agreed to sign on before the executives finished saying the title. “Before they said the word ‘Summer,’ I was like ‘Yes, thank you. I’ll do it,’” Robinson recalled.
But, as she and Lansky worked on the script, they got into a “heated argument” about the 1998 sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.” The debate was never over whether the sequel is “canon,” but how much that movie’s traumatic events would color Hewitt’s return, and thus dampen the “really, really fun” slasher movie Robinson intended to make.
“Jen and I had gone to Southport, North Carolina ourselves — just to experience Southport in all its authenticity. And that night, we were staying in hotel rooms next to each other, and we decided to watch, ‘I Still Know…’” Lansky explained. “As we got deeper and deeper into it, I was like, ‘Man, if this happened to you, not once, but twice … I would never trust anyone again. Ultimately, I think we came to a really healthy middle ground, a healthy compromise, in terms of how traumatized and shaped by what happened to her, Julie is.”
About recruiting Hewitt and Prinze Jr. to be involved, Robinson said, “There was no movie without them.”
She pitched them directly on the premise, giving them her spiel about why the movie should exist now. Then, once they were on board, they worked closely to develop the characters. “This movie is about how trauma informs and shapes and changes you underneath all the fun screamy gags,” Robinson said. “It was about figuring out exactly what these people would be like today, later in adulthood, having lived with what happened to them for as many years as they have.”
What about Karla (played by R&B superstar Brandy), Julie’s college bestie who also survived the sequel? Audiences can expect an update on her whereabouts. “Go see the movie,” Robinson said. “And see it on opening weekend.”
Indeed, balancing a reverence for the source material with creating a fresh, new story was challenging, but the filmmakers relished finding fun ways to pay homage to what came before.
“We never wanted to do anything for lack of a better word, ‘gratuitous,’ like for the sake of doing it,” Robinson said. “The way that we have built the lore of, especially the first movie, into this movie, allowed us to play with things from the original in a way that felt like it was a part of their story as well, rather than it being on top. It is very much woven within the fabric of this new installment.”
In helping this movie have its own identity, Robinson upgraded a few key elements, including the fisherman’s costume. “It’s years later, so it’s a different slicker. The other thing — and zero shade to the original hook; we love her — but she’s, like, not sharp!” the filmmaker quipped.
So, Robinson worked with the production design team to craft a new hook with a markedly sharper point, and not only that, “but the inside of the hook is also a blade,” she said. “So, we made it really bad.”
The prop was the first thing Bechtel encountered when she got on set. “I was like, ‘This is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,’’ she recalled. “The real one was a hazard.”
Naturally, a sharper weapon leads to bloodier and “even more extreme” kills. “There are a lot of twists, figuratively and literally, with the hook. There’s just more exacting revenge,” Pidgeon teased. “The kills, I think, are incredibly creative in the movie that we made. And on a bigger screen, there’s way more blood, way more guts. It’s like Costco version.”
Sony is certainly hoping that the movie will bring in massive amounts of dough at the box office. If all goes well, are there plans for a sequel?
“I don’t greenlight that!” Robinson said, laughing as she admitted that it has been discussed. “We have an idea. Some people survive …”
Scroll for more from the summer trailer launch event:
Sony Pictures via Getty Images
Sony Pictures via Getty Images
From Variety US