The director of the new I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot has opened up about why two stars were axed from the upcoming horror movie ahead of the release.
Film fans were sent into a spin when a revival of the 90s slasher was confirmed last year, with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr reprising their roles as Julie James and Ray Bronson respectively.
Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders led the latest group of Southport locals going up against a hook-wielding killer, alongside Sarah Pidgeon, Jonah Hauer-King and Tyriq Withers.
It was previously revealed that Lola Tung, star of Amazon Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez – who appeared in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story – were also in the cast, however they didn’t make it into the final version.
Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has now revealed that the pair were initially part of the opening scene, before it ended up on the cutting room floor.
‘In every movie, it’s best laid plans, and then you edit the movie, and you put it together and you go, “I love this in a vacuum. This is a fantastic scene. But it doesn’t fit in the movie,”’ she told People Magazine.
‘It was just one of those situations where it had nothing to do with Lola and Nicholas – they are both so fantastic. I really would love to work with them again. I loved working with them. They did a fabulous job.
‘But in the larger tapestry of the film, it just didn’t fit.’
‘It sucks because you don’t want to do that to those actors,’ she added. ‘And it sucks when you love something as a scene but that scene just doesn’t work in the final cut of the film.’
Although Jennifer didn’t quite share exactly what their scene entailed, she previously promised that the horror aspects of the reboot were ‘ratcheted up to 100’ so we can only imagine…
I Know What You Did Last Summer was released in 1997 and became an instant hit, spawning a sequel the following year.
In the new revival, a masked killer causes chaos in Southport once again after a group of friends make a pact to cover up a deadly car accident.
However, the past doesn’t quite stay hidden, and they find themselves stalked on the anniversary of the incident.
Speaking to Metro ahead of the release, Madelyn Cline shared that the cast felt ‘pressure’ to do the original movies justice, while also ensuring that their version was ‘new’.
‘I think we knew going into it, it was going to be its own,’ she told us. ‘It’s not a standalone, but definitely the goal was to compliment the original and bring back what made the original so good as much as we possibly could.
‘But also reintroduce new elements, and give a modern twist, and hopefully bring back everything that people loved, and also give them something to look forward to.’
I Know What You Did Last Summer is released in cinemas on July 18.
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