Stubborn SMG.
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the director of the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” revealed that she “tried relentlessly,” and failed, to get Sarah Michelle Gellar to return for the sequel.
“I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead,” the 37-year-old filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly as she broke down the sequel’s trailer released Tuesday.
Gellar, 48, played Helen Shivers in the original 1997 film in which her character dies.
“I tried to pitch some crazy s – – t too. I was like, ‘What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?’” Robinson explained. “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?’ Robinson added. “And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’”
Gellar previously told People of skipping the sequel, “My best friend [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.”
Robinson also revealed she wanted “Stranger Things” star Maya Hawke, who starred in her 2022 Netflix movie “Do Revenge,” to be in the new film but “we couldn’t work it out with schedules.”
The “I Know What You Did Last Summer” trailer features Gellar’s husband, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt reprising their roles as Ray Bronson and Julie James, respectively, from the first film.
Gellar’s Helen briefly appears in a photo frame in the footage.
The trailer also introduces new cast members Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers, and Jonah Hauer-King, who play a group of teenagers that are stalked by a mysterious stranger.
Sony Pictures’ synopsis for the movie reads, “When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer…and is hell-bent on revenge.”
“As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help,” the description adds.
The 1997 film was directed by Jim Gillespie and starred Gellar, Prinze Jr., 49, Hewitt, 46, Ryan Phillippe and Johnny Galecki. Prinze Jr. and Hewitt both returned for the 1998 sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”
The franchise was also adapted into a Prime Video series in 2021 starring Madison Iseman, Bill Heck and Brianne Tju.
In a recent interview with People, Hewitt said of the new sequel, “There’s lots of ’90s in there, so get excited because the ’90s are back again!”
“And there’s lots of twists and turns. I don’t think people are going to expect anything that’s coming,” the actress continued. “It’s a really fun ride.”
Robinson told the outlet, “We approached it like super fans, so I think people are going to be really happy. All the things that you want to see in this movie, you’re going to see in this movie.”
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” comes out in theaters July 18.
