John Hughes Pitched Middle-Aged ‘Breakfast Club’ Sequel in Last Conversation with Original Star

John Hughes’ coming-of-age classic “The Breakfast Club” remains one of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and as actor Anthony Michael Hall recently revealed, it almost had a sequel. The actor, who currently stars in the horror sequel “Halloween Kills” and appeared in “The Breakfast Club” as Brian Johnson (aka the Brain), talked about a possible follow-up in a recent interview with The Independent.

Hall said he last spoke on the phone with Hughes, who died in 2009, in 1987, when they bandied around ideas for a possible new installment that would find the characters all grown up and well into adulthood. Hall starred in “The Breakfast Club” opposite Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, and Judd Nelson.

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“At that time, he did mention the potential of doing a sequel to ‘The Breakfast Club,’” remembered Hall. “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.” Hall then added “I wish I could have spent more time with him. To let him know how much I loved him and how much he meant to me. Because, you know, he gave me my start, and so much more.”

This isn’t the first time whispers of a possible sequel to the 1985 film, about a group of teenagers from disparate cliques who find themselves in detention on a Saturday. In The Daily Beast’s 30th anniversary interview with Molly Ringwald, she said, “Somebody told me that there is the script for a sequel to ‘The Breakfast Club.’ One day, all that stuff will come out.”

Sequel or no sequel, “The Breakfast Club” remains one of the defining, quintessential films of the 1980s. Written and directed by Hughes, the movie grossed more than $45 million worldwide (not chump change for the ’80s), has been endlessly imitated, and has a place in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.

“John had a very sensitive soul, and I think that’s what also gave him an ability to tap into the internal experience that we all have as kids, as we become teenagers and then grow into adulthood,” Hall said of the director.

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