(Image credit: Columbia Pictures)
This week, audiences got their first peek at the fresh installment of I Know What You Did Last Summer, creatively maintaining its iconic title, through a gripping new trailer. The latest film reintroduces viewers to a new group of teenagers who stumble into perilous territory after a hit and run incident. The plot thickens when they discover that the supposed victim might still be alive and seeking revenge. Excitingly, the film features an intriguing cast including Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, and Jonah Hauer-King, while fan favorites Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt reprise their roles as Ray Bronson and Julie James.
Sadly, one beloved character from the original 1997 film will not be making a comeback – Sarah Michelle Gellar. Her character met an untimely end in the first movie. However, this wasn’t due to a lack of trying on the part of writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who fervently attempted some inventive retcons and directly appealed to Gellar for her return.
In a captivating reveal to Entertainment Weekly, Robinson expressed how she engaged in earnest dialogues with Gellar about how her character might feasibly make a surprise return in the sequel. Robinson candidly admitted, “I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead,” adding that she pitched some “crazy shit” as possibilities. She proposed scenarios where Gellar’s character might not have truly perished, only for Sarah to wittily retort, “I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.”
Where other franchises like Scream nostalgically revive characters, like Skeet Ulrich’s Billy Loomis communicating with Melissa Barrera’s Sam Carpenter through her subconscious, such logic-defying maneuvers wouldn’t suffice for Shivers’ return. As for other characters from that nerve-wracking summer, we’ll have to wait and see who survives when I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters on July 18. Remember to mark your calendars and be ready for a rollercoaster of horrific delights by exploring our curated list here.
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