With titles like Doctor Sleep and The Haunting series under his belt, Mike Flanagan has become something of an icon in the horror world. Flanagan would've further cemented that title with his planned remake of the 1997 slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer — here's why the movie never made it to the big screen.
Jeff Howard, frequent collaborator of Flanagan and would-be co-writer of the remake, told Bloody Disgusting that the idea came about on accident. Flanagan and Howard found success together with projects like Oculus and Before I Wake. The two began to take meetings, one of which happened to be at the company that produced I Know What You Did Last Summer. The group continued talking about the iconic slasher flick, and the idea for the remake was born.
Flanagan and Howard were offered the opportunity to remake I Know What You Did Last Summer, but initially turned it down. They were apprehensive, as the story is already so well known, but when they were urged to come up with their own take on the horror movie, the pair ran with the idea. However, at the time of writing this article, the idea hasn't progressed past a script. Here's everything we know about the unmade remake.
Why Flanagan's Remake Didn't Happen
Flanagan and Howard's movie seems to be stuck in development hell. It's an unfortunate demise that many scripts meet. Arrow in the Head reported in 2017 that the pair had been out of the loop with the movie's progression. Flanagan said at that moment in time he hadn't heard anything about the movie in a while — the movie remained solely in producer Neal Moritz's hands. Keep in mind, that was about three years after the project was initially announced. Flanagan also confirmed that he wasn't attached as a director, only a co-writer. That means that he was likely even further removed from the process than he would've been if he was at the helm.
This situation is more uncommon than not in Hollywood. It's often hard to recover from banishment to development hell. Howard's conversation with Bloody Disgusting took place in January 2021, and there still has not been a concrete update on I Know What You Did Last Summer's production. Since about seven years has currently passed without any sort of update, it's safe to assume the project is dead on arrival.
However, fans shouldn't completely give up hope on this project. Howard confirmed that he and Flanagan took a drastically different approach to telling their version of the classic 1990s horror movie. Because of that, Howard believes that the script could see life under a new title with a few tweaks to the story. He believes that Rian Johnson's whodunnit Knives Out created a market that would welcome their lost script. As the script has been passed off to Mortiz, there are likely some technicalities that would need to be worked out if that were to happen, but Howard is optimistic that the option is not completely out of the picture.
Mike Flanagan's I Know What You Did Last Summer Plot Details
The plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer is pretty well-known: a group of teens partakes in a hit-and-run accident and vow to keep it a secret, but the past comes back to haunt them a year later when a mysterious letter notifies them that someone knows about the crime. The teen horror movie is based on a novel of the same name. The book has the same core story, but the movie injected slasher elements into its telling of the story. Flanagan and Howard would have created a totally unique iteration of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Flanagan and Howard's story doesn't focus on a hit-and-run, but instead a disappearance. Their story follows teens Matt, Lauren, Kyle, and Jenna on a vacation in Antigua. Matt meets a girl named Christie, she disappears, and he is blamed. The movie then jumps a year into the future where Matt has been imprisoned for her presumed murder. The case has captured the nation's attention. Part of that is likely because of the way Matt's friends turned on him — Kyle testified against him, and Jenna started a viral Serial-style podcast called "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Matt is finally found not guilty and released from prison, but following his freedom, Matt is terrorized by messages that simply say, "I know." While Bloody Disgusting didn't reveal major spoilers from the script, Howard shared that he was most excited by the shocking ending that he and Flanagan had penned for their movie.
If Howard and Flanagan's I Know What You Did Last Summer remake ever comes to light, it will have to compete with an Amazon TV series adaptation of the horror movie that's being executive produced by James Wan. At the moment, there's been no official storyline for the show, but it's expected that the show will follow the original movie pretty closely. As Wan is considered a master of horror, the show will undoubtedly be an enjoyable watch. That said, after seeing the completely innovative horror Flanagan created with The Haunting series, it's disappointing to know that horror fans will possibly never get to see what he was going to do with I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Everything Else We Know About The Remake
Howard didn't reveal much about their would-be remake beyond the general story, but he did share one interesting plot point — the movie was intended to be a one-off standalone feature. This is a rare thing in cinema for a team to go in not wanting their film to spur a sequel. It's a reflection of the unique take that Howard and Flanagan were going with for their movie. The team wasn't going for the money grab with a shot-for-shot remake that might be stretched out into an unnecessary franchise. Instead, Flanagan and Howard intended to resurrect I Know What You Did Last Summer out of love for the film and the horror genre as a whole. It's for that very reason it's such a shame that their retelling of the story will likely never come to pass. The good news is that, as Flanagan and Howard are frequent collaborators, horror fans can expect to see new original films from them at some point in the future.