Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is widely considered one of the best teen comedy movies ever made, as well as a critical and commercial darling. It received rave reviews, with veteran film critic Roger Ebert himself saying it was “a sweet, warm-hearted comedy” and “one of the most innocent movies in a long time.”
Even more impressively, it grossed $70 million at the box office against a reported budget of $5 million. Unsurprisingly then, there were talks of a follow-up back in the ‘80s, but those talks didn’t really go anywhere.
“We thought about a sequel to Ferris Bueller,” Matthew Broderick told Vanity Fair. “He’d be in college or at his first job, and the same kind of things would happen again. But neither of us found a very exciting hook to that. The movie is about a singular time in your life.”
Well, Boderick and director John Hughes may not think a sequel would work, but how about a spin-off? Enter Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, who are set to make a new movie set in the world of Ferris Bueller titled Sam & Victor’s Day Off.
The movie will take place on the same day as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off but focus on the valets who took the Ferrari on a joy ride. In an interview with Variety, the Cobra Kai creators explained a little about the project.
“We are children of the ’80s. When we talk about the seminal movie experiences of our lives, there’s a five-year period from ’83 to ’88, where a lot of those movies fall for us,” Hurwitz explained. “Ferris Bueller was such a moment in our lives. We love side journeys. In Ferris Bueller, there’s this great wish fulfilment happening with these two valets, who take this amazing Ferrari on the ultimate joyride.”
“We only get a couple of glimpses of them leaving, cresting a giant hill, taking the car airborne and then returning it,” he continued. “What’s going on in their lives? They seem to be living a very different experience than Ferris, who lives in the ultimate suburbia. What may have led to them needing that car, wanting that car and taking it? When you begin to unravel all the threads, it sparked a lot of ideas.”
Hurwitz has said that the teen movie won’t be a retread of the original. Instead, it will add to the canon, and clearly, being aware of how much people love the original, he’s promised they will not “touch or mess with Ferris Bueller in any way.”
“We’re not interested in remaking something,” Heald added. “We love it so much, we want to explore it more. The similarity with Cobra Kai is it started with a point-of-view that you haven’t seen. In Karate Kid, what if you were in Johnny’s shoes? It makes you look back at The Karate Kid in a fun, different way. It keeps that movie alive in a different way. If things work out with this, it would be similar.”
If you want to know more about Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg’s work, we’ve written a guide all about Cobra Kai season 6, the next instalment in their TV series.