‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Series Officially Heads To Amazon, Hooks A New Writer
The teen slasher movieI Know What You Did Last Summerwas a very big deal to teens in the late 1990s due to its hooky premise and hot cast of young stars, and Hollywood has been struggling to figure out how to breathe life back into that stagnant franchise for years. Now it seems that Amazon has finally figured out how to make it happen, because a TV version for Amazon Prime Video has officially received a greenlight.
And while Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum) was once on board as the writer, the project now has some fresh blood in that department.
Entertainment Weeklyreports that theI Know What You Did Last SummerAmazon series is moving forward at the streamer. The project has been in development since 2019, when word came out thatJames Wan(The Conjuring) would be producing it.Neal H. Moritz, who produced the original 1997 movie, will be producing this TV version as well, which Amazon Studios Co-Head of Television,Albert Cheng, called “a perfectly twisted update to the iconic slasher movie.” That quote implies that the show won’t be a beat-for-beat remake of the movie, although the general premise is staying the same.
For those who’ve never seen the film, it revolves around a group of high school friends who accidentally run over a man in a car one night, and instead of reporting it to the police, they toss his body in the water and swear never to tell anyone about it. A year later, they find themselves stalked by a mysterious person who claims to know what they did. Here’s the trailer for the first movie:
Shay Hatten was originally announced as the writer for this TV version, but she’s been replaced bySara Goodman, a writer/producer on shows likeGossip GirlandPreacher.
“We are thrilled to haveI Know What You Did Last Summerwith our incredible partners at Amazon Studios,” Sony Pictures Television Studios Co-PresidentJason Clodfeltersaid in a statement. “Neal Moritz and Original Films' development consistently fires on all cylinders and that is proven once again with Sara Goodman’s contemporary and pulsating character weaving suspense thriller.”
In 2014, Sony wanted a theatrical remake of the original movie – and the studio even went as far as to hire a then up-and-coming horror writer/director named Mike Flanaganto write and direct it. Flanagan has obviously become a very big deal in the horror genre since then, directingGerald’s Game,Doctor Sleep, and Netflix’sThe Haunting of Hill House, and I can’t help but wonder what his version of a movie might have looked like. But here’s hoping Amazon’s TV version rejuvenates the franchise after the awful sequelI Still Know What You Did Last Summerand the direct-to-DVD junkerI’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer(which, coincidentally,we covered earlier this yearin ourDTV Descentcolumn).
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was rated PG-13. It is rated R.
