Ferris Bueller Spinoff Gets Director
Sam and Victor's Day Off is to be written by the creators of Cobra Kai and will center on two valets who take a Ferrari on a joyride.
David Katzenberg, a producer on The Goldbergs, It, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, has been tapped to direct Sam and Victor's Day Off, an upcoming Paramount comedy that spins out of the events of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The movie will follow the adventures of a pair of valets who took Cameron's father's Ferrari on a joyride, returning it worse for the wear and setting up key events in Ferris Bueller's third act. The creators of Netflix's Karate Kid spinoff series Cobra Kai, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald are all involved, with writer Bill Posley (who wrote for Cobra Kai Season 4) handling the script.
Richard Edson and Larry "Flash" Jenkins played the characters in the original movie, but will not return to reprise their roles in the spinoff. Jenkins passed away in 2019, but even without that, the characters would strike a very different figure almost 40 years on.
The InSneider first reported the news of Katzenberg's attachment, which has since been picked up and confirmed by industry trades.
This is the latest in a series of attempts by Paramount to revive Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In addition to a TV series which ran for 13 episodes in 1990 and 1991. It starred Charlie Schlatter (Diagnosis Murder) in the lead role and a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston as Ferris's sister. Star Matthew Broderick has said he and writer/director John Hughes discussed the idea of a sequel set at college, but it didn't ultimately appeal to either of them enough to pursue it.
In 2012, Broderick reprised the role of Ferris in a Super Bowl commercial about a middle-aged man blowing off work -- an idea that felt meaty enough that there were briefly rumors Broderick might actually develop it for the screen, but it does not appear that it was ever anything more than internet speculation.
Back in 2010, Broderick and Ruck had discussed ideas for sequels, with Ruck saying that he thinks they should do one in about another 15 or 20 years.
"I used to think why don't they wait until Matthew and I are in our seventies and do Ferris Bueller Returns and have Cameron be in a nursing home," Ruck said. "He doesn't really need to be there, but he just decided his life is over, so he committed himself to a nursing home. And Ferris comes and breaks him out. And they go to, like, a titty bar and all this ridiculous stuff happens. And then, at the end of the movie, Cameron dies."