Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson reveals why the pair’s scene — which was set to be the opener — didn’t make it into the final cut.
I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot sequel features many young stars, but viewers will no longer see two previously announced cast members on the big screen.
The film — which is directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson — features newcomers Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Tariq Weathers, Jonah Hauer-King, and more in its ensemble cast. While Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez were also cast, the director has confirmed that the two were ultimately cut from the film.
In an interview with People, Robinson said Tung and Chavez’s scene was set to be the opener of the slasher film. However, she admitted that she ultimately realized it didn’t “fit” with the rest of the film.
“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,” Robinson said.
The filmmaker went on to praise Tung and Chavez, noting that she’d like to work with them in the future.
“It was just one of those situations where it had nothing to do with Lola and Nicholas — they are both so fantastic,” Robinson said. “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.”
While speaking with Variety at the film’s LA premiere, Robinson shared how Tung and Chavez reacted to unfortunately being cut from the movie.
“Everybody was so professional about it. They’re so sweet, so lovely. They totally got it,” she said, before teasing, “Maybe they’ll make the sequel.”
I Know What You Did Last Summer — which is a sequel to 1997’s film of the same name, as well as 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer — features five young friends played by Cline, Wonders, Pidgeon, Weathers, and Hauer-King facing a familiar evil after something happened to them the previous summer.
Original stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt reprise their roles from the 1997 film and the 1998 sequel.
There’s one famous face, though, who won’t be making a return, but not without a lot of effort and persuading and outside-the-box thinking to try and make it happen. And it all comes back to what happened in that very first film.
Robinson — who also co-wrote the screenplay — admitted she “tried relentlessly” to convince Sarah Michelle Gellar to come back, but she couldn’t make it make sense for the Buffy alum, despite some desperate creativity.
“I tried, okay? I harassed her! But she is dead,” Robinson told Entertainment Weekly in April. “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?'”
“And Sarah’s like, ‘I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body,'” Robinson continued. “I was like, ‘Yeah, but what if?’ And she said, ‘I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.’”
I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters July 18, 2025.
