‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ is Set to Hook a New Generation

Sony Pictures has just released the first full trailer for I Know What You Did Last Summer, the long-awaited follow-up to the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sam Lansky from a story by Leah McKendrick and Robinson, the film will open in UK and Irish cinemas on 18 July.

The new footage revisits the chilling premise that defined the original franchise. Five friends – Madelyn Cline’s Danica Richards, Chase Sui Wonders’s Ava Brucks, Jonah Hauer-King’s Milo Griffin, Tyriq Withers’s Teddy Spencer and Sarah Pidgeon’s Stevie Ward – are bound by a terrible secret after they cover up a fatal hit-and-run. The trailer shows them receiving taunting messages in the aftermath of their pact, suggesting that someone is precisely aware of what they did last summer. As each character is picked off one by one, they turn to two familiar figures in the form of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson, and suspicions rise that the horrors of the 1997 Southport massacre may be poised to repeat.

Produced by Neal H. Moritz under the Original Film banner, in association with Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems, I Know What You Did Last Summer balances modern twists with franchise callbacks. Billy Campbell appears in an unspecified role, while Gabbriette Bechtel’s Tyler and Austin Nichols’s seasonal guest characters provide fresh angles on the slasher genre. Judy Greer and Mark Hamill also lend their voices to the unfolding terror, heightening the sense that no one is truly safe.

Madelyn Cline, best known for her turn in Outer Banks, leads the new generation of survivors, with Robinson’s screenplay injecting contemporary concerns such as the omnipresence of social media. A scene in the trailer hints at live-streamed screams as a smartphone records the stalking killer, underlining how digital culture can magnify real-world fears.

The project’s development stretches back to a Sony announcement in 2014 of a planned remake penned by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard, but that iteration never materialised. It was Robinson and McKendrick’s 2022 pitch that eventually won the studio’s approval, leading to early development in February 2023. Casting announcements followed swiftly, culminating in the return of Hewitt and Prinze Jr., who insisted on substantial screen time to justify their characters’ reappearance.

Principal photography took place in New South Wales and Los Angeles from October 2024 to March 2025. Elisha Christian served as cinematographer, capturing both the sun-baked highways and shadowy woods that characterise the series’ signature contrast between idyllic and deadly settings. Composer Chanda Dancy scored the film, aiming for a sound that underscores both suspense and the emotional fallout of long-buried guilt.

With the trailer below and sample the chilling score and a montage of ominous landscapes before the film’s release. Prepare for Sony’s slasher revival to stake its claim on 18 July and prove that some secrets refuse to stay buried.

I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer