Star Reece Witherspoon reportedly signed up last year, but Alexander Payne still isn’t guaranteeing that Election 2 will happen.
It’s been almost a year since we learned that Reese Witherspoon had signed up to reprise her role as Tracy Flick in a sequel to one of her most beloved films, Election. Along with that came the equally great news that, Alexander Payne, the helmer of the 1999 cult comedy, was returning to direct.
Both Witherspoon and Payne are rather busy people, though, and as such, no production date was announced. The film is set to be based on Tom Perrotta’s novel, Tracey Flick Can’t Win, a sequel to his 1998 novel on which the original Election was based. Reports at the time suggested that the movie would be headed to Paramount+.
Payne is out and about promoting his upcoming comedy drama, The Holdovers, and gave an interview with Collider in which he had this to say about Election 2:
“Tom Perotta, who wrote the book Election, has written a very fine sequel, and Reese Witherspoon and I have talked about it,” said Payne. “And Jim Taylor and I, my co-writer, have talked about doing it. But we just haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s only because everything takes a while, and I have a couple things to do before that. We’ll just see how it falls. It would be lovely to do.”
Maybe it’s just early-morning scepticism, but that doesn’t sound like a firm yes to us. As such, we’ll be reining in our excitement over this one considerably. Waiting for Witherspoon to return to the Legally Blonde series is difficult enough without adding a hopeless yearning for her to reprise the role of Tracy Flick into the mix as well.
In Perotta’s novel, Tracy Flick hasn’t entered into a successful career in politics as she memorably intended to in the first film. Instead, she’s struggling with adulthood and working as a teacher, much like her nemesis who was played by Matthew Broderick in the 1999 film. Hopefully, we’ll have some more positive news on Election 2 at some point in the future.
Read more: Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti reuniting for The Holdovers
