Latest news with #Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez Were Cut From ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer'
Fans who were excited to see Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer film shouldn't get their hopes up. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson recently told People magazine that the two actors' scenes were nicked from the final cut of the slasher sequel, despite the filmmaker initially planning to open the movie with them. More from The Hollywood Reporter First-Time Nominee Cooper Koch Is "Devastated" Over Emmy Snubs for Two of His 'Monsters' Co-Stars What Convinced Freddie Prinze Jr. to Return to 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Lola Tung Is Ready for 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' Fans to Be Surprised '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 explains of her decision to cut Tung and Chavez's scenes. '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,' she added. 'But in the larger tapestry of the film, it just didn't fit.' The Do Revenge director said it always 'sucks' when you have to cut someone's scenes, 'because you don't want to do that to those actors. And it sucks when you love something as a scene but that scene just doesn't work in the final cut of the film.' Chavez, who rose to fame last year with his portrayal of Lyle Menendez in Ryan Murphy's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, previously told The Hollywood Reporter that he 'had a really great time' shooting the reboot. 'All of the horror fans are gonna come for me as soon as they see this, but I had no idea what I Know What You Did Last Summer was before they came to me with the idea,' he added about joining the project. 'I live under a rock — please don't give me a hard time about it — but we started talking about it and then I turned to my girlfriend who's like the biggest horror movie nerd of all time, and her whole face lights up, her jaw drops and she's like, 'We gotta go watch the movie right now.' So we go into the living room where our TV is and we throw it on and it was just so much fun.' Chavez continued, 'I grew up a Scooby-Doo kid, so to see Freddie Prinze Jr. doing a different thing other than Fred, that was a lot of fun. So I got back on the phone and talked to the director [Robinson] and was listening to her pitch the direction that it should go in, and I was like, 'Yeah!'' The I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot, which hits theaters on Friday, sees Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt reprise their roles from the original 1997 pic. The film also stars Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Jonah Hauer-King and Tyriq Withers. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Convinced Freddie Prinze Jr. to Return to ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer'
Twenty-eight years after the original, I Know What You Did Last Summer is back — and so are stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The new film follows five friends who inadvertently cause a deadly car accident and cover it up, then a year later a stalker sends them taunting messages about their crime. Realizing that the stalker is imitating a famous serial killer, the group seeks help from the two survivors of the Southport massacre of 1997, in Prinze and Hewitt's characters. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Review: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt Return for a Legacy Sequel Not Worth Screaming About Why Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez Were Cut From 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Jennifer Love Hewitt Teases the Jaw-Dropping Ending of the New 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' At the Los Angeles premiere on Monday, Prinze told The Hollywood Reporter that he would usually have been hesitant to return to the franchise, but he was friends with director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson beforehand and was impressed by her 2022 film Do Revenge. 'She said, 'Look, I know you're going to pass, but let me just pitch you my version of this and let you see my vision and let's see if you dig it.' So it started by just telling me where these characters were at all these years later and how they dealt with this traumatic event and I liked that, and then she pitched me this wild vision that she had for the movie and I fell in love with it,' the actor recalled. 'I told her, 'Yo, I'm your guy' before they even wrote a script. I was like, 'I know it's going to work out, you and [writer] Sam [Lansky] will write a great script, she's a great writer anyway. I was like, 'You guys will write a great script but I'm in and we'll make everything work.' It was pretty easy once I heard the idea.' Prinze walked the carpet with wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, who also co-starred in the original film but did not return for the 2025 version as her character had died. He joked about coming back without his spouse, 'I don't think she cared — that's not a F.O.M.O. thing, she's not insecure like that.' The star also admitted that he doesn't 'see much of what I do [but] I've seen this movie; I really love it, I'm really proud of it, I'm grateful to be in it. I'm grateful to see Jen's vision from beginning to end in a studio movie, which is a harder way to make films these days because the notes are kind of crazy. But she was able to circumnavigate all of those speed bumps and maintain her vision, preproduction to postproduction to tonight, and I'm really proud and excited to see it again with all of these people.' In addition to the veteran actors, the new friend group is composed of Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers and Sarah Pidgeon. Cline — who is currently filming the final season of Outer Banks — noted that she grew up in South Carolina and 'everybody loves I Know What You Did Last Summer. And also, it's funny because some of our crew and our production also worked on the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, so we're all big fans, it's a legacy film. It's iconic — it's very, very cool to be passed the baton and have their blessing.' I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters on Friday. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' Director on the Shocking Twist Ending — and a Few Other Surprises
[Editor's note: The following interview contains major spoilers for 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.'] One of the great delights of the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' for fans of the original is the movie's thoughtful, satisfying use of the first movie's stars: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt don't just make perfunctory cameo appearances, they're integral components of the plot. Which leads to another great delight — and surprise — when Prinze turns out to be one of the movie's two killers. More from IndieWire 'I Still Know What You Did Last Summer' Has Slasher Fans Nostalgic for... Jack Black in Dreads? China Just Started Using AI to Animate Film Adaptations - Is Labubu Next? For co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, securing Prinze and Hewitt on board early was key — she ensured they were on board with the direction she wanted to take before even writing the script. 'There were some big swings with the characters, so those were conversations I had early on with them,' Robinson told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. 'I didn't want to run in a direction that one or both of them would have disliked.' Robinson was determined to craft versions of the characters that would feel like a natural evolution from where they began in the 1997 film, and was delighted when she met Prinze in a diner and found that he was quickly on board with his character crossing over to the dark side. 'It was not necessarily the pitch he thought he was going to get from me, but he was immediately on board,' Robinson said. The fact that Prinze was a huge horror fanatic who constantly recommended films to Robinson during production was an added bonus. 'I leaned on him hugely during this process.' That said, the greatness of Prinze's performance in the film comes from the fact that he plays his character without a shred of self-consciousness or winking at the audience — the revelation that he's the killer is as tragic as it is scary, thanks to the clarity and depth with which Prinze delivers his climactic monologue. 'He committed so hard,' Robinson said of Prinze in his final speech. 'That was the last thing we shot with him, and I was so taken aback. Everything was layered and deep and nuanced, and you could feel that pain. He executed it so beautifully.' While Prinze and Hewitt's appearances in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' were announced well in advance of production, Robinson and the studio kept a couple other performances by legacy cast members secret until release. Perhaps the biggest surprise was a cameo by Sarah Michelle Gellar; while the appearance is completely justified as part of a dream sequence, it nevertheless comes as a shock because Gellar gave interviews publicly proclaiming how ridiculous it would be for her dead character to return to the franchise. 'It was a very easy misdirect because neither of us have lied,' Robinson said. 'People say, 'Is she going to be in the movie?' and I say, 'She's dead.' And she is dead. It was fun to…obfuscate, but not lie.' Robinson had worked with Gellar on her previous movie, 'Do Revenge,' so when the director was offered 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' Gellar was her first call. 'I said, 'I kind of want to do this. Is this weird?' And she was so supportive. She was like, 'You have to do this.'' Another surprise cameo comes in the film's post-credits sequence, when Brandy returns as her character from 1998's 'I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.' Like Gellar, Brandy had been evasive in pre-release interviews, making her appearance more surprising — and, thanks to the way Robinson ties all the films in the series together, more satisfying. 'I always wanted Brandy in the film, but I wanted to make sure that it felt true to the story we were telling and the characters and the tapestry.' The fact that Hewitt's character had retreated into isolation due to her trauma gave Robinson the hook she needed to bring Brandy back. 'I liked that the events of this movie pushed her back to her former best friend, and now her potential partner in crime,' Robinson said. 'The movie had a reason to push you to Brandy and give you that prize at the end of enduring the experience of 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.' It gives you a fun moment of levity at the end, where you have someone commenting on the craziness that you just witnessed. It felt true and it felt right.' 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is now playing in theaters. To make sure you don't miss the Jennifer Kaytin Robinson episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Best of IndieWire The 16 Best Slasher Movies Ever Made, from 'Candyman' to 'Psycho' Martin Scorsese's Favorite Movies Include 'Eddington': 87 Films the Director Wants You to See The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in July, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal'
Screen Geek
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Screen Geek
Jennifer Love Hewitt Urges Fans To Watch 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Credits
The long-awaited follow-up to I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is nearly here. The new film will ignore the events of the third film in the series as well as the stand-alone Amazon Prime series, with original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. set to reprise their roles. Now Jennifer Love Hewitt is urging fans to stay for the credits when watching the new sequel also titled I Know What You Did Last Summer . Naturally, it's unknown what exactly will happen during the credits for the sequel, but Hewitt teases quite a few possibilities while speaking with Extra. Whatever the case may be, it sounds like fans will certainly find it worthwhile if they manage to stay for the credits and see what director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has planned. 'Don't miss the credits,' Hewitt begins. 'It could be a popcorn moment, it could be a death, or it could just be something really fun – but don't miss it.' While Hewitt doesn't fully reveal what will happen, it sounds like I Know What You Did Last Summer will be taking full advantage of the credits to include a post-credits scene worth seeing. Whether or not it's something played for laughs or a proper teaser for another sequel remains to be revealed. Of course, with the film's release coming this month, fans won't have long to wait to find out. In addition to Hewitt and Prinze, the film also stars Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, and Sarah Pidgeon. Other cast members include Gabbriette Bechtel, Billy Campbell, Austin Nichols, Lola Tung, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez. Robinson directed the film from a screenplay she co-wrote with Sam Lansky, based on a story Robinson co-created with Leah McKendrick. I Know What You Did Last Summer will hit theaters on July 18, 2025. Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional updates regarding the follow-up as we have them.
