What happens to perky cheerleaders when the game (of life) has ended, when the crowds have dispersed, and when life has settled on those vibrant shoulders, forcing you to put the pompoms down and pick up your daily burden? It doesn’t sound so great, does it? Well, if given the chance, this is the path that Peyton Reed would venture down if he was ever given the opportunity to reunite his Bring It On cast for a follow-up story. Spoiler: It wouldn’t be pretty.
Currently, Peyton Reed is immersed in Ant-Man conversations. He’s promoting the home video release of the first Ant-Man, and negotiating with Marvel to come back and direct the sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp. But while speaking with MTV, Reed was asked if he had any ideas for a second story to his earliest hit, Bring It On. He does, and they take the characters to a very dark place. Reed admitted:
If you did something that was like, where are those characters 20 years down the line — married, divorced, single, what are they doing? — any version that we’ve ever really jokingly talked about was always a very depressing version of it tonally, doing a movie that was entirely different tonally than the first one. We haven’t really seriously sat down to think about what it would be. It’s something where you want to be able to get really real with what has happened to everybody.
And if we’re being honest, I’d love to see that. Released back in 2000, the bubbly comedy Bring It On made great use of a perky Kirsten Dunst and a sarcastic Eliza Dushku, while also tapping into the bad-ass beauty of Gabrielle Union. It was a surprising crowd-pleaser, a seriously funny and energetic teen comedy that actually inspired four sequels, and a Broadway musical (!!)
But a darker, dare I say gritty story with the original cast of Bring It On? It absolutely could work, for this main reason: Peyton Reed lucked into (or, to be fair, recruited) a strong ensemble of talented actors for Bring It On, so feeding performers like Dunst and Union a multi-layered screenplay about how unfair life after high school can be would bring out the best in them. This could be the St. Elmo’s Fire for a new generation, a The Big Chill for the Apple crowd. Will it ever happen? Likely not. But we can dream, can’t we?
