Four decades later, Anthony Michael Hall has revealed that Hughes once considered bringing those characters back, this time as adults navigating life beyond high school. The idea never made it to the screen, but Hall says the director was still discussing the possibility years after the original film’s release. According to Variety, Hall shared the details during a recent appearance on The Rich Eisen Show.
Anthony Michael Hall Reveals What John Hughes Wanted for the Sequel
Hall played Brian Johnson, the academically driven student who finds himself serving detention alongside Andrew Clark, Claire Standish, Allison Reynolds, and John Bender. The five teenagers initially seem defined by the stereotypes attached to their respective cliques, but spending the day together gradually forces them to drop those labels and confront the problems they have in common.
The possibility of revisiting those characters apparently came up relatively soon after the movie became a hit. Hall recalled that Hughes was thinking about bringing the group together again, but with the characters having moved into adulthood. “It was something that was on his mind, the idea of bringing back the ‘Breakfast Club,’” Hall said. He added that Hughes envisioned “those five characters reunited somehow later in their life and they’re in the workforce and they’re in their 30s.”
The timing of that conversation makes the revelation particularly notable. Hall said his final conversation with Hughes took place in 1988, just three years after “The Breakfast Club” arrived in theaters.
“He called me with John Candy on the phone, and it was about 1988, and we just hung out on the phone for a couple hours, and he talked about [the sequel] at that time,” Hall recalled. The actor also made clear that he does not know how far Hughes had taken the idea, adding, “So I think that it was something he was playing with. I don’t know if he had written it or not.”
The sequel ultimately remained an unrealized idea. Hughes died in 2009, and no follow-up to “The Breakfast Club” was produced. The original, meanwhile, has remained one of Hughes’ defining pictures, earning preservation in the National Film Registry in 2016 and continuing to rank among the most recognized teen movies of the 1980s.