A TV series based on the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the 1973 novel by Lois Duncan on which the film itself was based, has been greenlit by Amazon. First announced last year, the reboot will share the basic concept behind the film – a group of teenagers is stalked by a killer a year on from a terrible accident on graduation night – but provide a more modern take.
The new horror series is written by Gossip Girl’s Sara Goodman, and produced by James Wan (the director behind Saw, as well as The Conjuring and Insidious) and Neal H. Moritz, who also produced the original film.
“Neal Moritz and Original Film's development consistently fires on all cylinders and that is proven once again with Sara Goodman’s contemporary and pulsating character weaving suspense thriller,” says Jason Clodfelter, co-president of Sony Pictures TV Studios, which will release the series along with Amazon Studios. Albert Cheng, of Amazon Studios, adds in a statement: “The best horror franchises always have another scare coming, and this I Know What You Did Last Summer series from Sara Goodman is a perfectly twisted update to the iconic slasher movie.”
Directed by Jim Gillespie, the classic slasher from 1997 featured a then-soon-to-be-iconic cast including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr, and Sarah Michelle Gellar (who was also in the midst of early Buffy episodes). Though it shared similarities with Scream, which was released the year before, it received mixed reviews at the time and hasn’t enjoyed quite the same cultural impact.
In more 90s nostalgia news, the first trailer for Zoe Lister-Jones’s upcoming reboot of The Craft was released late last month. A Candyman reboot – or “spiritual sequel” – is also on the way, courtesy of Jordan Peele, though it’s now been pushed back to 2021.