Election: Alexander Payne is getting serious about making a sequel (and a car chase movie?)

Last Updated on August 21, 2024

Alexander Payne’s Election is a movie whose reputation seems to be growing more and more each year. With a new Criterion Collection edition in stores (and the film celebrating its 25th anniversary), Payne and the film’s writer, Jim Taylor have recently been exploring a potential sequel. The original film was based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, and the sequel would be based on his most recent novel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win.

According to a recent interview in Deadline, Payne is seriously considering teaming with Payne to adapt the sequel, saying, “There is talk and Jim Taylor and I are conceding that now,” with him adding, “If there were to be a sequel to Election, what would that look like?”

The original film starred Matthew Broderick as a high school Social Studies teacher who becomes hellbent on destroying her campaign for student body president at her high school. While the film’s ending suggested Flick would pursue a political career, Perrotta’s follow-up novel took a much different approach. In it, Flick is a law school drop-out who becomes vice principal of her old school, and she becomes hellbent on becoming principal when the position opens up. 

In previous interviews, Payne said he would take a loose approach to adapting the novel. He is eager to drop the high 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 seems open to the idea, he also revealed in his Deadline interview that he’d like to do a western with his The Holdovers writer David Hemingson, saying, “It would be nice to take a kind of realistic-slash-naturalistic approach to a Western and also using landscape. In as much as sense of place is important…part of my interest is having even greater dramatic, archetypical interplay between character and landscape. I think it’s really interesting. Also, I’d like to do a good car chase film.”

A car chase film directed by Alexander Payne? Sign me up!