Reese Witherspoon to reprise role as Tracy Flick in ‘Election’ sequel
Reese Witherspoon will reprise her role as ambitious Tracy Flick in a sequel to one of her breakout films, 1999’s Election. The original film, a black comedy directed by Alexander Payne, was received with widespread acclaim, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Election saw Witherspoon play a tightly-strung high schooler determined to become student government president. However, Matthew Broderick’s Jim, a popular teacher, does whatever he can to sabotage Tracy’s chances of winning. Over 20 years later, the sequel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win, will follow the overachiever, now an assistant principal at a suburban high school, as she battles to become the principal.
The sequel will also be directed by Payne and adapted from Tom Perrotta’s 2022 novel of the same name, a follow-up to his book that provided the source material for the original film. According to the author, “She hasn’t fulfilled her dreams of a political career. And she’s looking back and starting to realise that she wasn’t as extraordinary an individual as she believed. That she was a kind of representative woman rather than a unique superhero.”
The film will be released on Paramount+, with Payne reuniting with Jim Taylor to write the screenplay and Witherspoon producing via her company Hello Sunshine. In an interview with USA Today earlier this summer, Witherspoon teased the secret project, saying that out of a “dozen projects in various stages of development”, there was one she “can’t really talk about” but would see her “reprising a character I played a long time ago.”
The project is one of many for which the Oscar winner is set to star. In the near future, Witherspoon will lead a romantic comedy for Netflix with Ashton Kutcher, star in Legally Blonde 3, and an untitled wedding comedy for Amazon alongside Will Ferrell. The actor’s company Hello Sunshine is also set to adapt Dolly Parton’s novel Run, Rose, Run into a film.
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