NEED TO KNOW
Sean Kaufman knows what he wants to see for Steven in The Summer I Turned Pretty movie.
The Prime Video series concluded after three seasons in September, but fans will get to return to Cousins Beach one last time in a movie, which was announced at the season 3 premiere in Paris.
While Kaufman, 25, says the specifics of what’s to come in the movie — like if fans might see Steven and Taylor (Rain Spencer) get married — is a question for creator and showrunner Jenny Han, he tells PEOPLE what he has been thinking about.
“I think the only thing that I’d be looking forward to — that I’d want — is for the two of them to just finally actually be together,” he says of the on-again-off-again couple that ended season 3 as an item.
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Kaufman hopes the movie will show “a relationship between the two of them that’s not focused on trying to get together or, when they fight, breaking up.”
He instead hopes that Steven and Taylor will get to a place where “when they fight, it’s not the end. It’s simply: let’s try to work this out because we’re trying to be together.”
Spencer, 25, tells PEOPLE she also wants to see the couple “be on the same team” even when problems arise. “When conflict arises, how do they handle it?” she wonders, while Kaufman adds, “I’m excited for that.”
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The movie, which Han will write and direct, has not begun filming and has no set release date. But the author previously told PEOPLE it was “always my vision” to end the story with a movie. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I knew that it was going to take a beat to put everything into place,” she said.
“I feel like there [are] still some more things that the audience wants to see, and I wanted to deliver that to them in a bigger way than [just] wrapping up at the end of the season,” she continued.
“I’m excited to offer that gift to the fans who I know really want to see Belly and Conrad together in a relationship,” Han said. “Because we see the beginnings of a return to each other [in the finale], but you don’t get to see what that looks like. So I’m excited for that.”
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Lola Tung, who plays Belly, told PEOPLE there’s “so much to explore” in the movie, which will pick up after her character finally chose between the Fisher brothers — Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) — in the season 3 finale.
The finale is “the beginning of their happy relationship, but there’s a lot of unfinished business with Jeremiah, and even Steven and Taylor,” Tung, 23, said.
All 3 seasons of The Summer I Turned Pretty can be streamed on Prime Video.
