Paramount Just Killed the Most Baffling '80s Comedy Reboot
Many of the biggest comedy movies from the ‘80s have gotten the reboot treatment by now. There was the Vacation legacy sequel, the recent reimagining of The Naked Gun and next year we’re getting an extremely belated follow-up to Spaceballs.
Even the classic Zucker Abrahams Zucker spoof Airplane! scored a reboot recently, albeit in a highly unofficial capacity. Judging from the trailer for Airplane 2025 starring Tom Arnold, we all owe Airplane II: The Sequel an apology.
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But what about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the John Hughes classic about a psychopathic teenager who scams an entire community and has absolutely no respect for parade etiquette?
Back in 2022, Paramount reported that they planned to expand the Ferris Bueller-verse with a brand new movie. Rather than cast a new Ferris Bueller, or risk Matthew Broderick breaking his hip jumping over suburban fences, the story would have focused on Sam and Victor. Who the hell are Sam and Victor you may ask? Well, apparently they’re the parking lot valet attendants who temporarily took custody of Cameron’s dad’s car.
“Sam and Victor’s Day Off will follow the same-day adventure of the titular valets who took the Ferrari on a joy ride in the Matthew Broderick-starrer,” Deadline explained. So the planned sequel was basically like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but spotlighting two minor characters from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, AKA the Hamlet of ‘80s teen comedies.
This is a genuinely bizarre pitch for a sequel/reboot. It would be like trying to bring back the RoboCop franchise by building a project all around that one guy who gets shot in the balls. Or how about a Die Hard movie that’s just two hours of Argyle the limo driver chatting on his car phone?
To be fair, Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald were set to produce Sam and Victor’s Day Off, and the trio clearly has experience turning disposal plot points from ‘80s movies into surprisingly compelling stories.
Nevertheless, Paramount officially killed the project. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the studio’s new regime quietly scrapped a number of projects, including Winter Games, “a romantic sports drama starring Miles Teller,” an “Area 51 movie” from Colin Trevorrow and the Ferris Bueller spin-off.
So fans wanting more Ferris Bueller-based content will just have to watch that TV show starring a chainsaw-wielding imposter.
