The best Smart DNS for watching movies abroad.
This summer, I Know What You Did Last Summer will join the hot trend of legacyquels/requels, and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. will be featured as the requisite franchise veterans… but that may be a touch confusing to those who have seen I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. In the final scene of the 1998 sequel, Hewitt’s Julie James is seemingly killed while Prinze’s Ray Bronson is on deck to be murdered next. So how are the characters back? According to co-writer/director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the answer is that the new movie is essentially picking and choosing what counts as canon.
Entertainment Weekly has published a preview of the new I Know What You Did Last Summer in advance of the upcoming horror movie‘s arrival on the big screen in July, and the piece features Robinson’s explanation of how Julie and Ray are still alive nearly two decades after they seemingly died. The answer comes down to a specific way that she views what counts in the continuity of the franchise and what doesn’t, saying,
So the way that I’ve approached the franchise is that I feel like those final scenes in the first two movies live outside the canon, because in the first movie she gets attacked through the shower, through the glass door, and in the second movie, she gets pulled under the bed. So they’re both alive and well, and what I will say is that we have continued the tradition in our film.
On the one hand, this makes sense. As noted, the original I Know What You Did Last Summer features a final scare where Julie is attacked as she is about to take a shower, and that’s not really an event that is acknowledged in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. This does bring up other questions, though.
For starters: how much is being trimmed off the canon tree here? If, for example, the filmmaker is suggesting that the last canon scene in the 1998 movie is Julie hugging Brandy Norwood’s Karla Wilson, does that mean that the legacyquel won’t acknowledge that Julie and Ray get married and purchase a home in the suburbs? Or is that part of the story and it’s just the murder that doesn’t happen?
Secondly, if this is a tradition that is confirmed to be maintained for new movie, doesn’t that kind of decrease what we can expect from the stakes at the end? When everything is wrapped up, should the audience just read the coda as some kind of fantasy?
Confused as I may be, this does raise my curiosity about what to expect from the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, if not only because it’s interesting that Jennifer Kaytin Robinson is thinking about continuity on a deep level. Also starring Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, and Billy Campbell in addition to the aforementioned Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., the new slasher will be in theaters on July 18 (and check out our 2025 Movie Release Calendar to see all of the big titles that will be premiering this year)