Richard Linklater Says a BOYHOOD Sequel is Possible

Patricia Arquette won the Best Supporting Actress award at last night's Oscars for her work in Richard Linklater's Boyhood, but many were surprised that the film wasn't honored with any other Academy Awards. (It was an early favorite for Best Picture, and it had a good shot at taking home Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay, too.) For Boyhood fans who put a ton of stock in the Oscars, the film's losses stung. But here's some news that might make you perk up a little bit.

Linklater recently went on Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A Podcast and revealed that he's actually considering making a sequel. The Playlist has the transcriptions of the conversation:

"To be honest...this film first met its audience exactly a year ago and for the first six months of the year, my answer to [whether or not he'd make a sequel] was absolutely not. This was twelve years, it was first grade through 12th grade; it was about getting out of high school. I had no idea about another story, there’s nothing to say. It hadn’t crossed my mind. But I don’t know if it’s been a combination of finally feeling that this is over or being asked a similar question a bunch over the last year, that I thought, well, I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘the 20s are pretty formative, you know?’ That’s where you really become who you’re going to be. It’s one thing to grow up and go to college, but it’s another thing to…So, I will admit my mind has drifted towards [this sequel idea].”

Hmm. I'm not sure audiences would react the same way to a sequel because it doesn't have the same behind-the-scenes originality as the first film did. But it sounds like the sequel wouldn't follow the same cinematic structure as the original anyway:

“The twelve years [structure] came out of [school structure]. It wouldn’t have to be twelve years. It wouldn’t have to be… I mean, who knows. I mean, if I learned anything on the ‘Before’ trilogy it took five years to realize that Jesse and Celine were still alive and had anything to say. This one would probably be more accelerated, but who knows.”

Let's not forget Linklater's next movie (which comes out later this year) is called That's What I'm Talking About, and it's been called a spiritual sequel to Dazed & Confused, which sounds like it could cover a lot of the same ground that a Boyhood sequel would cover. But that doesn't seem to bother him too much.

“I’ve dealt with this before… I have, in my movies, touched on people in their 20s. So to what degree I’ll be going over certain territories again—I dunno, it’s impossible to say what may or may not come of it... I would love to keep working with this cast and I think we all would. But that can’t be the primary reason to do it. You always need something to say. You can’t do it just cause you want to work with your friends, you gotta have something really inside you you’re trying to communicate about those years. It might happen, but I dunno, it’s in the ether in the moment.”

What do you guys think? Would you like to see a sequel to Boyhood, checking back in with those characters as they grow even older? Or was it a lightning in a bottle situation that should be better left alone?

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