The author Lois Duncan got the idea for the book while she was making dinner and her daughter Kerry was having a conversation with a friend in the kitchen. Kerry told her friend about a boy that interested her, and her friend was considering what to wear on her upcoming date. The two eventually found out they were talking about the same boy. Duncan began to wonder what would happen if "the boy had deliberately implanted himself in the lives of two girls he knew were friends" and if "he built up a different personality to present to each of them". Duncan later read a story about a hit-and-run in the newspaper, which led her to incorporate one into the novelOn October 5, 2010, Little Brown reissued the novel in paperback with updates to modernize some of the content. I Know What You Did Last Summer was in the first group of 10 different titles that were updated and reissued with these changes. In the revised edition, Duncan gave her characters cell phones and updated some of her characters' clothing choices. The war Collingsworth had fought in was changed from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War.
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An audiobook, read by Dennis Holland, was released by Hachette Audio in 2010 and features the modernized text. Lizzie Matkowski from Booklist thought that early on in the audiobook Holland "establishes a sense of normalcy in both the dialogue and narrative, which makes the revelations of what Julie and her friends did and their attempts to go on normally stand out starkly". She stated that the characters are deeply flawed, but that "Holland manages to redeem them little by little by emphasizing their naivete, youth, and regret".
A movie tie-in edition of the novel released in October 199. It sold 517,000 copies by November 1998. It was listed by Publishers Weekly as the top selling children's fiction book for the months of October, November and December 1997. A 1999 paperback edition published by Dell was selected as a 2005 Popular Paperback for Young Adults by the American Library Association.
The novel was adapted into a 1997 film directed by Jim Gillespie and starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Julie, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Helen, Ryan Phillipe as Barry, and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Ray. Although the film retained the same premise of the novel, the story was re-envisioned as a slasher film, with the four friends being hunted by a hook-wielding killer. In addition to featuring the deaths of several characters, unlike the novel, the film depicts the friends as accidentally running over a fisherman, who secretly survives the hit-and-run and is ultimately revealed as the killer. Duncan was critical of the adaptation, stating in a 2002 interview she was "appalled" that her story was turned into a slasher film.
The film was a commercial success and spawned a film series consisting of a direct sequel in 1998, and a third film in 2006.
To watch the adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer by YouTube JoBlo Horror Originals, simply click on the link.
Source: Wikipedia