The Breakfast Club almost had a legacy sequel courtesy of legendary 80s teen dramady director John Hughes. Anthony Michael Hall, who played Brian “The Brain” Johnson in the beloved original, has now revealed several details regarding the once mooted follow-up, which would have picked up with the cherished characters several years later.
“At that time, he did mention the potential of doing a sequel to The Breakfast Club. It would have been all of us in our middle-age. His idea was to pick up with them in their twenties or thirties. That [idea] was on his mind, but that was the last conversation I had with him.”
Whether being in your “twenties or thirties” is considered to be middle-aged is pretty debateable, but aside from that it sounds like John Hughes wanted to reunite audiences with The Breakfast Club during their later years, and revealing the direction their lives had taken since leaving Shermer High School. Did the profound lessons learnt during that life-changing all-day detention stick, or did the likes of John Bender and Claire Standish revert back to their cliques?
This is perhaps a question that fans of The Breakfast Club would prefer to remain unanswered, but It’s hard not to be intrigued by what Hughes and the original cast would have done with a legacy sequel, exploring the club now that they have come-of-age.
Released in 1985, The Breakfast Club was written, produced, and directed by John Hughes, and has since become a fan-favorite as well as a treasured, iconic example of 1980s coming-of-age cinema. Featuring an all-star cast including Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy, the movie follows a group of teenagers from different high school cliques who spend a Saturday in detention with their authoritarian assistant principal. So profound is the story of this particular gang of teens that The Breakfast Club was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2016 due to being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Sadly, following the death of John Hughes in 2009, The Breakfast Club 2 never came to be, but this is not the first time that one of the original cast has discussed the idea of a sequel. In 2015, actress Molly Ringwald revealed that the details of such a project would eventually come to light saying, “Somebody told me that there is the script for a sequel to The Breakfast Club. One day, all that stuff will come out.”
Emilio Estevez has also offered his thoughts on a follow-up in the past, saying that he would be interested in returning to The Breakfast Club should a sequel happen. “If it happens, I’m there,” he said, though notably this was before Hughes’ passing. “John’s got an idea for a sequel – mature aged students at college, all doing time again – for some reason or another,” Estevez said, according to the outlet. “The twist would be that we’re all the polar opposites of how we were in the original.”
Is a legacy sequel to The Breakfast Club something that you would like to see? Anthony Michael Hall has returned for a very different legacy sequel in Halloween Kills, which is out now after slaying the box office competition. This comes to us from The Independent.
Source: movieweb.com