Alexander Payne is serious about making a sequel to Election, which will follow the career of Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon).
Alexander Payne Elections — a film whose reputation seems to grow more and more with each passing year. With a new Criterion Collection edition in stores (and the film's 25th anniversary in celebration), Payne and the film's screenwriter, Jim Taylor, have recently been exploring the possibility of a sequel. The original film was based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, and the sequel would be based on his latest novel, Tracy Flick Can't Win.
According to a recent interview in DeadlinePayne is seriously considering teaming up with Payne to adapt the sequel, stating: “There is talk, and Jim Taylor and I now admit it,” and he added: “If there was a sequel Elections“What will it look like?”
In the original film, Matthew Broderick played a high school social studies teacher who becomes obsessed with ruining his campaign for student body president at his high school. While the film's ending suggested that Flick would pursue a political career, Perrotta's subsequent novel took a very different approach. In it, Flick is a law school dropout who becomes vice principal at her old school, and she becomes obsessed with becoming principal when a position opens up.
Payne has said in previous interviews that he will take a free-form approach to adapting the novel, aiming to ditch the school setting and find a way to bring Broderick's character back into the fold. Reese Witherspoon is already on board to reprise her role. She is also producing the potential film through her Hello Sunshine label with Paramount Plus.
While Payne appears to be open to the idea, he also admitted in his interview with Deadline that he would like to make a Western with his Stronghold screenwriter David Hemingson, stating: “It would be nice to have a kind of realistic-slash-naturalistic approach to the Western, and also use the landscape. As important as a sense of place is… part of my interest is to have an even more dramatic, archetypal interaction between character and landscape. I think that's really interesting. I'd also like to make a good car chase movie.”
A car chase movie directed by Alexander Payne? Sign me up!