NEED TO KNOW
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An excerpt from a new non-fiction book, Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie, notes that I Know What You Did Last Summer author Lois Duncan did not like the 1997 adaptation of her novel
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In 2010, Duncan revealed she was “horrified” with the film’s “sensationalized violence,” which came on the heels of her daughter’s tragic death
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The film was adapted eight years after the author’s daughter, Kaitlin Arquette, was murdered
Author Lois Duncan, known for her novel I Know What You Did Last Summer, said years before her death that she was “horrified” with the original film’s adaptation of her book.
In Clark Collis’ forthcoming non-fiction book, Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie, he writes that the late author was “unaware” of all the changes made to her 1973 novel before going to see the 1997 horror flick.
Duncan’s original story follows four teenage friends who accidentally kill a cyclist and ultimately cover up their crime. A year later, the group is taunted and blackmailed by a mysterious figure who knows about the incident.
Fast forward nearly 25 years, and the story was adapted by screenwriter Kevin Williamson, directed by Danny Cannon, and starred Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Johnny Galecki, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
“I Know What You Did Last Summer”
Unlike the book, Williamson added the villain, “Fisherman,” to create “an iconic killer, à la Jason and Michael Myers,” he said in an excerpt of Screaming and Conjuring obtained by Variety.
In the book, Williamson explains that he comes “from a fishing community in North Carolina” and used his background while trying to brainstorm ways to change the original source material.
“I went to my dad, and he walked me around the boat, and he showed me the A-frame, and how someone would be jerked up to the top,” Williamson says in the book. “Then I wrote it, and he went, ‘Kevin, that would never happen.’ I said, ‘Yes, but it’s in the movie, Dad.’ “
Williamson then wrote the script before going back and doing “a set of rewrites,” he says in the yet-to-be-released book.
“We added Johnny Galecki’s death scene on camera, and we changed the ending,” he explains. His creative choices were a hit with audiences, and the film became a cult classic.
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Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. for “I Know What You Did Last Summer”
However, during a “Q&A with fellow young adult author Barry Lyga published in the 2010 edition of I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Duncan “revealed that she first learned about the character of the Fisherman when she saw the finished movie,” per Collis’ book.
“It was my characters and my plot gimmick, but then it went in all directions,” she said at the time. “I was quite horrified by the sensationalized violence.”
“Several years earlier, my own teenage daughter, Kait, had been chased down in her car and shot to death, and I had seen, right in front of my eyes, what real violence is. To have people screaming and laughing about it did not go down well…,” the excerpt continued.
While she “was not happy with the movie,” she was admittedly “happy with the fact that the book had been made into a movie, because that made all my backlist suddenly very popular.”
“It was like getting a rebirth, but in a very strange way,” she added at the time.
Duncan’s daughter, Kaitlin Arquette, was shot to death in 1989 at age 19. She was murdered the summer after she graduated from high school. At the time of her killing, she was driving home from a friend’s house when she was struck in the head by two bullets that entered the driver’s side of her red Ford Tempo.
It wasn’t until July 2021, five years after Duncan died, that Paul Apodaca confessed to three rapes and three murders, one of which was the murder of Arquette, per Rolling Stone.
Apodaca was sentenced to 45 years in prison in January 2024, per the Albuquerque Police Department.
Brook Rushton/Columbia Pictures
Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in “I Know What You Did Last Summer”
The release of the Screaming and Conjuring excerpt came days before the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel premiered.
The upcoming film includes Prinze Jr. and Hewitt reprising their roles as Ray Bronson and Julie James, respectively. The new film stars Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers, and Jonah Hauer-King.
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I Know What You Did Last Summer premieres in theaters on Friday, July 18. Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie will hit shelves on Tuesday, Sept. 2.
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