Over at Stuck in the 80s, they have details of one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long, long time: a sequel to beloved John Hughes comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In the script, Ferris (now 40) has become a motivational speaker who implores his audiences to stop and smell the roses. Apparently, in screenwriter Rick Rapier’s vision, Ferris is still friends with Cameron, but Sloan is unhappily married and a film actress.

Ferris opts for another day off, leading to all sorts of wacky hijinks. The end. (Myself, well, I had a different take.)

Should anyone in Hollywood actually be considering this idea, I have a few words for you: Caddyshack 2.  Grease 2. The Phantom Menace.  And, lest we forget, the Ferris Bueller TV show. The idea reeks of desperation, and what’s worse, could never even begin to live up to the hype.

Fortunately, it appears that no one involved with the first film is actually attached to Rapier’s script, or indeed any other Bueller sequel. Indeed, Rapier doesn’t seem to have any Hollywood credits at all. This isn’t any different from you or I writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings where Frodo travels to the future and meets James Bond. It’s either fanboy wankery or an attempt to get Hollywood attention, about on par with that kid from The Toy who was at one time urgently trying to get The Toy II made to revive a career that seemed to have disappeared with his boyhood.

Indeed, the principals from the film have long ago dismissed the idea of Bueller 2. In 2001 Broderick recounted a meeting with John Hughes to do a sequel:

Nobody was all that enthusiastic – I mean, the studio was. But it seems a little bit of a one-time event to me – it’s about a particular day.

It’s a little hard to make a Ferris Bueller movie without Ferris himself. (Or John Hughes, for that matter.) Here’s an idea, if anyone’s really that desperate: Why not leave the character be, but get Hughes, Broderick, and the rest of the cast together for an entirely different film? That would seem to be the least invasive way of revisiting that particular bit of nostalgia.

Or better yet, just leave the past be.