{"id":27159,"date":"2025-07-21T22:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T22:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27159\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T22:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T22:40:11","slug":"i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reinvented-southport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/27159\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Reinvented Southport"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most memorable aspects of the 1997 \u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer<\/a>\u201d is its location, a North Carolina fishing town called Southport where the vengeful killer tries to pick off cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr.<\/a>, Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar one by one. Vividly conceived by production designer Gary Wissner, Southport provided a unique and richly detailed environment for the original movie\u2019s action, and its spirit remained central to the 1998 sequel \u201cI Still Know What You Did Last Summer<\/a>\u201d even though most of that movie moved the horror to an island in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

For the latest installment in the franchise \u2014 also titled \u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer<\/a>\u201d \u2014 co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson<\/a> wanted to pay tribute to Southport\u2019s role in the story while taking it in new directions. \u201cThe bedrock to this story is the gentrification of Southport, which underwent this glow-up and is a very different place now,\u201d Robinson told IndieWire\u2019s Filmmaker Toolkit<\/a>\u00a0podcast<\/a>. In Robinson\u2019s conception, Southport had to reinvent itself after the murder spree of the original film<\/a> \u2014 meaning that it\u2019s no longer a working class fishing community but an idyllic resort town.<\/p>\n

\"'X-Men:<\/a> \"'Christmas<\/a> <\/p>\n

This transformation plays a key role in causing the film\u2019s villain to snap, and it also enables Robinson to come up with a new color palette for the movie, replacing the first film\u2019s occasionally dreary grays with eye-popping whites, blues, and pastels. That meant choosing a different location than the North Carolina towns where the first movie shot. \u201cI felt that going back to the same place 27 years later it would just look the same,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cWe wanted to reimagine the world and have it feel different from the original movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that in mind, the filmmakers chose to double North Carolina in Sydney, Australia, a decision partly made because of tax credits but primarily due to the area\u2019s natural beauty. \u201cIt\u2019s this idyllic, idealized seaside 4th of July town,\u201d Robinson said of the Southport recreated in Sydney, \u201cand Sydney was a really good double.\u201d Robinson noted that even in the original film some material was shot in Northern California, including the scene where the road accident that sets the story in motion occurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing looks like that in North Carolina,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cBut Sydney does look like the intersection between Northern California and North Carolina, so there are some ways that made it harder and some ways that made it a lot easier to marry the look of the original movie to this one and create this new world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer\u201d is now playing in theaters.\u00a0To hear the full Jennifer Kaytin Robinson interview and make sure you don\u2019t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most memorable aspects of the 1997 \u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer\u201d is its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,2695,23574,23575,13729,20077,206],"class_list":["post-27159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-filmmaker-toolkit","tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","tag-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer","tag-jennifer-kaytin-robinson","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}