We can all be glad Boyhood‘s legacy had a brighter future this past weekend when it lost out on Best Picture, joining the ranks of the best films of the decade thus far (and many that came before). Now in higher demand thanks to the film’s success, Richard Linklater recently wrapped his last project, but now we’ve got the first word of one he may take on soon.
According to THR, he’s looking to reteam with Annapurna Pictures for an adaptation of Maria Semple‘s novel Where’d You Go Bernadette. With a script adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (The Spectacular Now, Fault in Our Stars), the story is narrated by the 15-year-old-daughter of “an agoraphobic architect and mother named Bernadette Branch who goes missing prior to a family trip to Antarctica.” The family story certainly fits the likings of Linklater and one can check out the Amazon synopsis below:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
Before we go, one of the most exhausted questions Linklater was asked during the Boyhood press and awards tour was about the potential of a sequel. While he played along with vague teases, I doubted he’d ever actual say anything of weight, but a new chat with Jeff Goldsmith (via The Playlist) has us questioning that. Check out his quote below.
“To be honest… this film first met its audience exactly a year ago and for the first six months of the year, my answer to that was absolutely not. This was twelve years, it was first grade through 12th grade; it was about getting out of high school. I had no idea about another story, there’s nothing to say. It hadn’t crossed my mind, but I don’t know if it’s been a combination of finally feeling that this is over or being asked a similar question a bunch over the last year, that I thought, well, I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘the 20s are pretty formative, you know?’ That’s where you really become who you’re going to be. It’s one thing to grow up and go to college, but it’s another thing to… So, I will admit my mind has drifted towards [this sequel idea].”
If he would continue the story, he says, “this one would probably be more accelerated, but who knows.” As for coming up with ideas for it, he adds, “I can tell it’s happening [in the same way] because I start coming up with ideas about [that time period]. The same way I thought about Boyhood: just these random little memories about being in my twenties that might seem insignificant on paper, but telling and important. And developmentally, like, ‘oh, that was kind of a moment’; a lot of moments from the fraught 20s.” While he “would love to keep working with this cast,” he concludes, “that can’t be the primary reason to do it. You always need something to say. You can’t do it just cause you want to work with your friends, you gotta have something really inside you you’re trying to communicate about those years. I might happen, but I dunno, it’s in the ether in the moment.”
As we await the Paramount release of his next film, That’s What I’m Talking About, check out a great video celebrating his career this far below:
What do you think of Linklater’s potential projects?