One of the crucial memorable points of the 1997 “I Know What You Did Final Summer time” is its location, a North Carolina fishing city referred to as Southport the place the vengeful killer tries to choose off forged members Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Ryan Phillippe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar one after the other. Vividly conceived by manufacturing designer Gary Wissner, Southport supplied a novel and richly detailed atmosphere for the unique film’s motion, and its spirit remained central to the 1998 sequel “I Nonetheless Know What You Did Final Summer time” despite the fact that most of that film moved the horror to an island within the Bahamas.
For the newest installment within the franchise — additionally titled “I Know What You Did Final Summer time” — co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson wished to pay tribute to Southport’s function within the story whereas taking it in new instructions. “The bedrock to this story is the gentrification of Southport, which underwent this glow-up and is a really completely different place now,” Robinson instructed IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. In Robinson’s conception, Southport needed to reinvent itself after the homicide spree of the unique movie — that means that it’s not a working class fishing group however an idyllic resort city.
This transformation performs a key function in inflicting the movie’s villain to snap, and it additionally allows Robinson to provide you with a brand new shade palette for the film, changing the primary movie’s sometimes dreary grays with eye-popping whites, blues, and pastels. That meant selecting a distinct location than the North Carolina cities the place the primary film shot. “I felt that going again to the identical place 27 years later it might simply look the identical,” Robinson stated. “We wished to reimagine the world and have it really feel completely different from the unique film.”
With that in thoughts, the filmmakers selected to double North Carolina in Sydney, Australia, a choice partly made due to tax credit however primarily because of the space’s pure magnificence. “It’s this idyllic, idealized seaside 4th of July city,” Robinson stated of the Southport recreated in Sydney, “and Sydney was a very good double.” Robinson famous that even within the unique movie some materials was shot in Northern California, together with the scene the place the highway accident that units the story in movement happens.
“Nothing seems to be like that in North Carolina,” Robinson stated. “However Sydney does seem like the intersection between Northern California and North Carolina, so there are some ways in which made it more durable and a few ways in which made it rather a lot simpler to marry the look of the unique film to this one and create this new world.”
“I Know What You Did Final Summer time” is now taking part in in theaters. To listen to the total Jennifer Kaytin Robinson interview and be sure you don’t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform.