Anthony Michael Hall Teases His Next Generation Breakfast Club Movie - Exclusive
What do you get when you cross a jock, a nerd, a rebel, a princess, and a socially awkward outcast? You get "The Breakfast Club," of course — the seminal, high school drama of the 1980s from the late writer-director John Hughes. The film helped give birth to the Brat Pack, a group of influential young actors who received top billing in a variety of cherished teen movies of the same era such as "Sixteen Candles" and "St. Elmo's Fire." One of the core members of the Brat Pack is Breakfast Clubber Anthony Michael Hall, who went on to star in other John Hughes-written-and-helmed classics such as "Weird Science."
But did you know there was once talk of a sequel to "The Breakfast Club"? Hall is currently duking it out with Michael Myers in "Halloween Kills," but during an exclusive interview with Looper, we also picked his brain about the success of "Cobra Kai" and asked how he felt about the idea of reviving of one of his many John Hughes classics in the same vein.
"Well, out of deference and respect for John Hughes, I don't know if that will ever happen because he's no longer with us," Hall told Looper. "But I can tell you this — the last time I had the privilege of speaking to John Hughes was in 1987 or 1988, I think. I had just finished 'Johnny Be Good.' And what happened was he called me with John Candy on the phone, which was really cool. The three of us wound up hanging out for about two hours on the phone. And I'll tell you at that point John did mention the idea of doing a sequel to 'The Breakfast Club.'"
He added, "I think what was interesting to him was to see where we would be if we did come back together as so-called adults. How would we deal with each other? Or how would they progress into their professional lives and with families and the whole thing? So that was something that John Hughes was entertaining."
The Class is a reimagining of The Breakfast Club
Sadly, "The Lunch Club" — or whatever it might've been called — never went beyond small talk. Maybe that's a good thing. However, Hall went on to tease something he has in the pipeline, and it sounds like the closest we're going to get to a "Breakfast Club" follow-up. Coincidentally, there's some connective tissue with "Cobra Kai."
"I produced a film this past summer called 'The Class' and it's not a remake of 'The Breakfast Club,' but it's sort of a reimagining," said Hall. "It's a writer-director named Nick Celozzi. He wrote a really great script. And so, in this new version we have, it's funny you mentioned 'Cobra Kai.' We have Hannah Kepple from 'Cobra Kai' in it and Charlie Gillespie, who has a show called 'Julie and the Phantoms' on Netflix and then Lyric Ross from 'This Is Us.' So this time it's six kids instead of five and Debbie Gibson and I are the two teachers. So I play the assistant principal but there's shades of Paul Gleason there from the original and then Debbie plays their drama teacher."
It may not be the sequel some are hoping for, but most of the core ingredients are there: an original Brat Pack star playing a role? Check. High school setting? Check. Angsty teen characters? Check. Hall went on to explain the show's setup, and while there's no sign of a Saturday detention hall as the key backdrop, it sounds like these six teens are all facing a common dilemma together.
"The last thing I'll give you is that it opens with her giving them a test — they've all failed her class previously," Hall teased. "So they have to do an improv and basically come into class and present a character to the rest of the students, and so it unfolds from there. And I have to tell you, the script is so good because the stakes for all the kids individually are much sharper. They're very keeping with modern day situations and stresses and things that people deal with. So it was a really interesting project. So okay, it's not a remake but it's an updated sort of 'Breakfast Club' for a new generation."
"Halloween Kills" is currently playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock with a premium subscription.