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Why Freddie Prinze Jr. turned down a She's All That reboot, but jumped at the new I Know What Your Did Last Summer movie

I Know What You Did Last Summer star Prinze says the She's All that reboot "felt like marketing"

28 years after his first encounter with The Fisherman killer, Ray Bronson is back to assist a new generation of would-be victims survive the slashings of the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot. However, Bronson might not have returned at all had his real-world actor, Freddie Prinze Jr., not fallen in love with the idea for a franchise reboot. In fact, Prinze passed on a She's All That reboot for exactly that reason.

Prinze recently sat down to discuss the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer film with horror outlet Fangoria, for an interview published in the most recent issue of their quarterly magazine. Speaking to Fangoria's Meredith Borders, Prinze Jr. revealed that "I was very hesitant" to return to the role of Bronson, one of the teens that tried to cover up an accidental manslaughter and kicked off the revenge spree of the original I Know What You Did Last Summer.

"I had passed on the She's All That remake because it felt very inorganic to me," Prinze says, "It just felt like marketing, and I was really nervous that this would be the same thing."

In case you're out of the loop: She's All That is a 1999 romantic comedy starring Prinze, Rachael Leigh Cook, and fellow horror icon Matthew Lillard. The film garnered both a cult following and a 2021 Netflix follow-up, He's All That. And as Prinze indicates, he was not involved in making the new movie.

So what makes the case of the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot different Prinze's mind? That would be the take on the franchise pitched by reboot director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.

"It was so different and unique and fun," Prinze explains, "It still stayed true to the characters, but allowed them that twenty years of growth to see who they've both become now."

("Both" here refers to Bronson and on-screen girlfriend Julie James, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt.)

Whether or not Star Wars: Rebels star Prinze continues with the franchise will, we suppose, come down to whether Robinson and Co. can keep pitching ideas that Prinze feels give the characters honest space to play in. 

Oh, and it also probably has a lot to do with whether Ray Bronson survives this movie.

I Know What You Did Last Summer slashes into theaters July 18.


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Grant DeArmitt

Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. As Popverse's Staff Writer, he criss-crosses the pop culture landscape bringing you the news and opinions about the big things (and the next big things). In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.

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