Anthony Michael Hall says the late director John Hughes talked seriously about reuniting the five detention-room characters of The Breakfast Club as working adults in their thirties, a sequel that never made it past a phone call.
Hall, who played Brian "The Brain" Johnson in the 1985 film, disclosed the conversation during an appearance this week on The Rich Eisen Show. About seven minutes into the interview, Hall described a phone call from roughly 1988 in which Hughes laid out the broad strokes of a follow-up: the same five high schoolers, older now, reunited somehow in the workforce.
The late comedian John Candy was also on the line, Hall said. The call lasted a couple of hours, and Hughes used part of it to float the sequel idea, though Hall could not say whether Hughes ever put a word of it on paper. Deadline reported Hall's comments, which amount to the most concrete public account yet of a Breakfast Club follow-up that existed only in Hughes's imagination.
Hall's recollection paints Hughes as a filmmaker who never stopped generating material, even in casual conversation. The sequel talk was not the first time Hughes blindsided Hall with a concept out of nowhere. Two weeks into shooting The Breakfast Club, Hughes walked up to his young star and pitched an entirely different movie.
"He goes, 'I just came up with another idea for our next film.' He goes, 'It's going to be you and this other kid. You're going to create a girl in the computer.' I'm like, 'What?'"
That pitch became Weird Science, released the same year as The Breakfast Club in 1985. Hall starred opposite Ilan Mitchell-Smith, with Kelly LeBrock playing the computer-generated woman. Hughes had dreamed up the entire premise while still in the middle of directing a different picture.
Hall described the sequel concept in similar terms, something Hughes was "playing with," an idea that lived in conversation rather than on a studio's development slate.
"It was something that was on his mind, the idea of bringing back the Breakfast Club. Like, those five characters reunited somehow later in their life and they're in the workforce and they're in their 30s."
Hall added plainly: "I don't know if he had written it or not."
Hughes died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 59. By Hall's account, their last conversation took place around 1988, meaning the two lost touch more than two decades before Hughes's death. Whatever the sequel concept was, it apparently stayed locked in Hughes's head.
Hall's relationship with Hughes began with Sixteen Candles in 1984, the first of three consecutive collaborations. Hall has spoken warmly about Hughes in other settings as well. In a Fox News interview, Hall called Hughes the man who "gave me my career" and described their bond as something beyond a typical director-actor arrangement.
"He gave all of us a new generation of actors. But he was just a friend."
Hall also reflected on the disorienting experience of becoming famous at fifteen. "I didn't anticipate being famous at age 15 just because I was a part of all these fun movies," he said. "To be very honest, it did freak me out when it first happened."
Now in his late fifties, Hall has continued to work steadily. He recently starred in and executive-produced The Class, an independent film about high school seniors forced to spend a Saturday at school, a setup that consciously echoes the detention premise Hughes built four decades ago. The film premiered in select theaters and on digital platforms.
Hall's revelation about Hughes's interest in a follow-up sits in tension with what the full cast said publicly just last year. In April 2025, all five original Breakfast Club stars, Hall, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy, appeared together at the C2E2 convention in Chicago for the film's 40th anniversary. It was the first time the five had been on a stage together since 1985. Estevez had never previously joined a public cast reunion.
The panel was emotional. Ringwald told the audience she felt "really very emotional and moved to have us all together." But when the question of a sequel or remake came up, the cast shut it down unanimously, out of respect for Hughes.
Estevez framed the reason in terms that would resonate with anyone tired of Hollywood's remake-and-reboot assembly line. As the New York Post reported, Estevez told the crowd that modern films are "concept-driven" rather than "character-driven," and that "the beauty of John is that he focused on characters first."
That distinction matters. Hughes built The Breakfast Club around five teenagers talking in a library for an entire Saturday. No special effects. No franchise architecture. No post-credits teaser. The movie worked because Hughes wrote characters who felt real enough that audiences still care about them forty years later. A sequel designed by committee in today's IP-driven studio system would almost certainly strip out the very quality that made the original last.
Hall's account does not prove Hughes would have made the film. It proves he thought about it, which is a different thing entirely. Hughes was a prolific idea generator who could pitch a movie on a phone call and have it in theaters within a year. He was also a filmmaker who walked away from directing entirely in the early 1990s, spending his later career writing and producing under pseudonyms. The man who dreamed up a Breakfast Club sequel in 1988 may well have talked himself out of it by 1989.
Several questions remain unanswered. Did Ringwald, Estevez, Nelson, or Sheedy ever hear the pitch? Did Hughes mention it to anyone at a studio? Is there a treatment or outline sitting in the Hughes estate's files? Hall could not say, and no one else from Hughes's circle has weighed in publicly.
What is clear is that the idea existed, at least as a spark, in the mind of the one filmmaker who could have pulled it off. And that filmmaker has been gone for seventeen years.
Some stories are better left where their creator left them. Hughes understood characters. His cast, four decades later, understood that too.
