Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie, and it looks... exactly how you'd expect a legacy sequel to the original IKWYDLS would look!
The teaser features the return of the Fisherman, who dispatches the unfortunate boyfriend of Madelyn Cline's (Outer Banks) character with his signature hook. We also see Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. as OG survivors Julie James and Ray Bronson, alongside new cast members Chase Sui Wonders (The Studio), Sarah Pidgeon (The Wilds), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid) and Tyriq Withers (Him).
According to the synopsis, the movie follows "five friends who inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, and cover it up by making a pact to take the secret to the grave. A year later, someone seeks revenge while making it clear they know what they did last summer."
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the exact same plot as the original. The only difference is that our new protagonists will consult two survivors of the Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.
Ben Willis, aka The Fisherman, was the seemingly unkillable villain of the original trilogy. Believed to be a normal man who set out to take revenge on the group of teens who left him for dead in the first movie, he survived all manner of carnage in the two sequels with zero explanation.
Whether this new killer will turn out to be Willis or a copycat remains to be seen.
One original character/cast member who will not be returning is Sarah Michelle Gellar's Helen, although director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson did her best to convince the Buffy the Vampire Slayer star to reprise her role.
"I tried relentlessly, and she's dead," the filmmaker tells EW. "I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead. I tried to pitch some crazy s--- too. I was like, 'What if it's like you weren't dead and you're actually alive, but in hiding?' And Sarah's like, 'I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.' I was like, 'Yeah, but what if?' And she said, 'I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.'"
I Know What You Did Last Summer already has a couple of sequels in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, but neither was as successful as the first, so it's hardly surprising that Sony would be taking a page out of the new Halloween trilogy's play book and ignoring everything that came after the original.
Prime Video also released a small-screen spin-off in 2021, but the show was cancelled after a single season.
Robinson (Do Revenge, Someone Great) directs the new movie, with Leah McKendrick (Deviant Love; M.F.A.) penning the script, which is based on an original sequel idea she developed with Robinson.