Movies
Sarah Michelle Gellar Rules Out ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Sequel Return
The slasher franchise I Know What You Did Last Summer is returning with a brand new legacy sequel next year, with Freddie Prinze Jr. confirmed to reprise his role from the original movies and Jennifer Love Hewitt in talks to return as well. One star of the 1997 slasher movie who won’t be back? Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Helen Shivers.
Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character was memorably butchered in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but it’s not like we haven’t seen previously dead characters return to life in the horror genre. The actress confirms in a new chat with People, however, that she won’t be back.
“I am dead,” Sarah Michelle Gellar flat out responded to the outlet when they asked if she’d be back in next year’s franchise reboot. That doesn’t mean she won’t be contributing to the project behind the scenes, however. The actress tells People, “My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity.”
“So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title,” Michelle Gellar continues.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is of course married to Freddie Prinze Jr., who has been confirmed to reprise the role Ray Bronson in the upcoming sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The slasher franchise will return to theaters on July 18, 2025.
Madelyn Cline (“Outer Banks”) will star in Sony’s reboot alongside Sarah Pidgeon (“Gotham”), Tyriq Withers (“Atlanta”) and Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid).
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) is on board to direct the new installment in the franchise for Sony, with Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.) writing the original draft of the screenplay. The latest draft, however, was written by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson & Sam Lansky.
Jim Gillespie directed the original I Know What You Did Last Summer back in 1997, written by Kevin Williamson (Scream) and based on Lois Duncan’s novel. The film spawned sequels in 1998 and 2006. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. only came back for that first sequel.
More recently, the franchise returned with Amazon’s short-lived television series.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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