’80s Director May Totally Redo Breakfast Club
— -- Quintessential ’80s filmmaker John Hughes is zooming back to the future with a pair of new projects that will reharness the strengths of his classic teen flicks like Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Hughes has committed to write, direct, and produce an as-yet-untitled “modern-day Cinderella story” for an eight-figure bankroll, reports Variety. The setting? None other than the Windy City, which has long been Hughes’ favorite stomping ground for his angst-ridden, young adult characters. With a well-known female star, that film could begin production next spring with a Christmas 2001 release date.
Attention, neo-maxi-zoom-dweebies: The director is also said to be in talks to remake his much-loved film, The Breakfast Club. Set in a mid-’80s suburb of Chicago, the original (featuring Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and Emilio Estevez) detention crew — aka the Breakfast Club — spawned some of Gen-X’s most quoted lines: “Does Barry Manilow know you raid his closet?” and “When you grow up, your heart dies.”
Hughes Contemplates Redux, Not Sequel
How can Hughes re-create the mismatched crew’s climactic 1985 detention? At the end of the movie, they must write a letter to their demented high school principal, telling him who they think they are as individuals. Instead, they write a joint letter: “Each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.”
That sounds like a pretty open-and-shut case, which may be why Hughes is choosing to consider a remake, rather than a sequel. Knowing whether Bender (Nelson) went on to reform his hoodlum ways and marry the rich girl, Claire (Ringwald), would probably just depress viewers.
The new Breakfast Club is said to have a $25 million budget. Perhaps that could buy more than a few fresh faces; we suggest American Pie’s Jason Biggs (who’d be a dead ringer for Bender), Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek as the brain, and Marilyn Manson’s girl, actress Rose McGowan, as the freakish Alison. And how about bad boy Nelson returning to pose as the oppressive principal, much like the once-hip Ringwald did when she appeared as the uptight substitute teacher in Teaching Mrs. Tingle?
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