Why Ryan Phillippe Isn’t in I Know What You Did Last Summer Reboot but Could Return in a Sequel (Exclusive)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel, in theaters now.

Ryan Phillippe is not back for the latest installment of I Know What You Did Last Summer despite his three counterparts from the original reprising their roles.

Twenty-eight years after the 1997 slasher, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return as Julie James and Ray Bronson, the two survivors of the vengeful fisherman killer.

Though Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers was murdered in that first film, the star, 48, shows up for a quick cameo, reviving her Croaker Queen for a cheeky dream sequence.

Phillippe’s Barry Cox also died in the O.G. movie, but the actor, 50, does not return for a cameo. His character and his tombstone are, however, mentioned in the film.

Producer Neal H. Moritz, who has been behind the franchise since the beginning, tells PEOPLE that squeezing in a Phillippe cameo in a movie already full of nostalgic easter eggs “would’ve been pushing it.”

Explains director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, “It just got to be too much. We have a Barry Cox mention. He gets a shout-out. But, yeah, it started to feel like too many ideas. But it is not for a lack of love of Ryan — he is amazing. And I do think there is a very fun way to integrate Ryan into a sequel that I hope happens.”

On the Just for Variety podcast in May, Phillippe joked about not being able to revisit his iconic roles since he is often killed off.

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“I feel like I made the wrong move dying in all of these projects because then when they’re resurrected, I don’t get to be a part of them,” he said. “I used to think it was cool. I’m like, ‘If I could take a character to their last moment.’ Now, I’m like, ‘What are you thinking? No, you want to live in case there’s more movies to be made.’ ”

He added, “But it’s cool to see that those films, those projects have endured — that had the impact culturally that they did — that they would want to revisit them. It definitely makes you feel like a dinosaur or aware of your age. But at the same time it’s a compliment to something that you were a part of that succeeded.”

Producer Moritz says it was a “full-circle moment” making the new film decades after the original, which he counts as the “first real hit” of his career.

“The movie holds such an important place for all of us that were involved in that first movie, and we didn’t want to do [this new film] unless we were doing something that we felt could be as good as the first one. That was really the point. There needed to be a reason for it to exist, and I think we came up with that reason. The past and the present coming together was a great kind of hook idea.”

I Know What You Did Last Summer is in theaters now.