What Would ‘The Breakfast Club 2’ Have Looked Like? – Armessa Movie News

John Hughes‘ coming-of-age teen comedy-drama The Breakfast Club is still widely regarded as the seminal story of Gen X and their angst-addled, insecure high school years in the 80s. Not much has changed in the 40 years since its release as high school can be some of the most challenging years of life, and Hughes covers all the bases with his five leads. You had the rebel John Bender (Judd Nelson), the popular girl Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), the jock Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), the introverted freak Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy), and finally, the nerdy bookworm Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall).

He brought them all together to spend a Saturday morning detention in the library of the high school where they dropped all pretense and made life hell for their supervisor Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) who was pushed to the limit that day and forced to utter one of the most memorable lines of the decade, “You mess with the bull! You get the horns!” For years, fans of the seminal movie have wondered what a sequel might have looked like. Can a second film be made? Would it star the original cast or be a complete reboot with new actors regurgitating the unforgettable monologue that defined Generation X?

Related: John Hughes Movies Changed How We Talk About Teenagers On-Screen

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hughes considered a sequel quickly and had spoken to some of the cast about it. Anthony Micheal Hall recounted a conversation that he and Hughes had during his promotion for Halloween Kills in 2021. According to Hall, who had shot to stardom with Hughes after collaborating on Sixteen Candles, and subsequently turned down roles in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink, spoke in 1987 about a sequel and discussed some pitches, but regrettably, the two had a falling out that led to them not speaking for 20 years. Hughes was working on his underrated comedy, The Great Outdoors starring John Candy and Dan Akroyd when Hall was privy to some of the late filmmaker’s ideas saying, “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 (before Hughes’ death from a heart attack at the age of 59).”

A ‘Breakfast Club’ Sequel Would Have Taken Place Years After the Original

There were rumors that Hughes had written a sequel that would take place ten years after the events of the first film. When Molly Ringwald spoke to The Daily Beast about it, she said “I don’t know… Somebody told me that there is the script for a sequel to The Breakfast Club. One day, all that stuff will come out.” This would have been an incredibly cool franchise idea if each entry were separated by a decade and allowed us to check in on our favorite band of teen misfits as they made their way through their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Emilio Estevez, who thrived in his role as a son suffocated by the demands of his overbearing parents let it be known that he would also be interested in another film before Hughes’ death in 2009, “If it happens, I’m there. 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 Moviefone “The twist would be that we’re all the polar opposites of how we were in the original.”

Why a Sequel Has Always Been in High Demand

For children of the 80s, it stands as the best representation of the many worlds that collide within the walls of the building where they spent their teens trying to find who they were and where they belonged. Everyone could identify with at least one of the stereotypes Hughes so deftly creates and directs. The film struck such a chord with moviegoers that many have wondered what a sequel would have looked like. Thankfully, Hughes never bit on the idea as a second movie of a cast still in their teens just wouldn’t have made much sense considering they were all set to head in different directions after graduation. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t dream about a scenario where the five teens get back together in some capacity in our version of The Breakfast Club 2.

We know what you’re probably already thinking about what The Breakfast Club sequel would look like. If they pulled a script from the how-to-make-a-sequel file, it would likely have been made just a couple of years after the original, and the leading players are all still in high school. Hughes could’ve done that, but no one would buy it because they are mostly upperclassmen, and doesn’t make chronological sense as not enough time would have elapsed to recreate the same characters with a different spin. A second, way too obvious version would be to have them all reconnoiter at a high school reunion. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 years or 20 or longer, that’s been done so many times. It’s too formulaic and staid. The late Hughes never liked to revisit his best movies in that way. So we’re going to go ahead and disabuse you of the most unoriginal options and go with another idea of how they should’ve brought “The Brat Pack” back together.

Why Middle Age Would Have Been the Right Option for a Sequel

Just last year, a movie came out on Netflix that delivered a truly original and fresh way to bring a group back together, and it happened to be a sequel. Granted, it was a different cast of characters, but Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery used a plot device that I think would work well for what the next Breakfast Club should look like. In Glass Onion, a group of friends is reunited after a long separation by a mysterious invitation-only event. This would be the ideal plot device to reengage the cast without relying on the tired trope of a high school reunion. A classic like The Breakfast Club has moved beyond that at this point. All the actors are now in their 50s and still active in the business, so why not use something similar to the Knives Out sequel as a blueprint? We’re thinking something along the lines of Hall’s character offering the promise of a financial windfall as the motivation to lure them back to Chicago to the panoramic restaurant on the top floor of the John Hancock building. It would have to be an offer they couldn’t refuse and verified with individualized invitations including secretive quotes from the original that no one else could possibly know, and the characters would be the exact opposite of how they were in the original. This is the version we’d like to see anyway, but with Hughes having tragically passed away, any sequel would lose the magic that he brought to the 80s comedy drama classic.