We return to discussing a film that Brat Pack fans have long been waiting for: the sequel to St. Elmo’s Fire, which hit theaters in 1985 and enjoyed an extraordinary following because it featured a roster of young stars such as Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andie McDowell and, above all, Rob Lowe, who at the time was as radiant as the sun. It is precisely from the latter that the confirmation arrives: the film will be made. A guest on the late-night talk show Watch What Happens Live, the actor stated:
I assure you it is in development. All of us (the cast) want to do it and we should receive a first draft of the screenplay in the first week of October.
Lowe added that he had met with the producers and chatted with them about the film for about four months. The project is in its very early development stages, so we will see what ultimately emerges.
The sequel/prequel to St. Elmo’s Fire was announced in 2024 and, at the time, Demi Moore revealed that Sony, to whom the first film belongs, intended to move forward with number 2, provided they could find a screenwriter capable of crafting a script as solid as the one born from the partnership between Joel Schumacher, who also directed the film, and Karl Kurlander, which drew on his rebellious youth.
Even before 2024, Variety had spoken of a TV series inspired by the film that NBC was working on. The screenplay was entrusted to Josh Berman (CSI), who would have produced it together with Chris King. Described as a modern reinterpretation of the film focusing on a group of friends navigating careers and the commitments and responsibilities of adulthood, unfortunately it never came to fruition.
St. Elmo’s Fire is the quintessential Brat Pack film, a group of actors barely in their twenties destined to become Hollywood icons. The story follows a handful of recently graduated college students amid friendship, romance, disasters, and uncertainties. The film was panned by critics but enjoyed strong audience appeal, grossing $6 million in its first week in the U.S. and totaling just over $37 million in earnings. According to once-professed statements by the director, no famous actor wanted to star in St. Elmo’s Fire. It was thus that, on the advice of John Hughes, who had directed them in The Breakfast Club, Schumacher brought into the fold Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy. Demi Moore was considerably more famous, but she could begin filming only after a stint in rehab. Rob Lowe, who was certainly the most in-demand member of the group, had already made his mark in his breakout film, titled Class, which also starred Andrew McCarthy and Jacqueline Bisset. He later acted in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders, which also featured a very young Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon. For the actor, subsequent roles included the not-so-memorable Hotel New Hampshire and Oxford Blues. After St. Elmo’s Fire, Lowe teamed up with Demi Moore again in About Last Night, a bittersweet romantic comedy directed by Edward Zwick and based on David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago”. In Italy the film was initially forbidden to viewers under 18.
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