He was the charming high schooler who broke the fourth wall and taught a whole generation to stop and look around every once in a while. But forty years after ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off‘ first came out, Matthew Broderick has a sobering theory about what happened to that iconic character. And it is not a happy ending.
Matthew Broderick’s Bleak Theory About Ferris Bueller’s Fate
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Broderick, who is now 64, shared his surprisingly bleak prediction for Ferris’s fate. Fans might like to imagine the character living a life of nonstop adventure, but Broderick thinks the high school rebel probably ended up giving in to the very thing he once seemed to be fighting against.
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“He’s pretty charming and creative but he probably turned into his dad,” Broderick said. “That’s what most of us do.”
It is a darkly realistic take on a character whose whole deal was rebellion and living in the moment. Broderick suggests that the spark that made Ferris so captivating when he was young would have faded with age. He would have ended up following the same path as his on-screen father, a stiff businessman who was more of an obstacle than an inspiration. This goes against years of fan theories, some of which imagined Ferris as a figment of his friend Cameron’s imagination or a character stuck in some kind of time loop.
The Real Reason A Ferris Bueller Sequel Never Happened
The actor also talked about why a sequel never happened. He pointed out that the death of writer-director John Hughes in 2009 made the idea impossible.
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“When John was alive, I always thought, ‘Maybe we’ll do it again?’ but too much time passed,” Broderick recalled. He explained that he and Hughes had talked about ideas involving college or a first job but “neither of us found a very exciting hook to that. The movie is about a singular time in your life.”
Matthew Broderick And Alan Ruck Joke About A Wild Sequel Idea
Even if Ferris might have become his father, Broderick is enjoying a reunion with his on-screen best friend. He and Alan Ruck, who played the anxious Cameron Frye, have gotten back together for a new comedy called ‘The Best Is Yet to Come‘. Broderick says it felt like no time had passed. Ruck has joked about his own character’s fate too, saying that “Cameron’s father came home and threw him out the window.”
The two also considered a much stranger sequel idea, this time with them in their seventies. Ruck’s morbid joke was to wait until they were really old and have Ferris break Cameron out of a nursing home so they could “do a bunch of nasty stuff, and then Cameron dies.”
Though Broderick’s current prediction for Ferris may be cynical, his career remains vibrant. He and Ruck are also getting nostalgic about their shared history, with Ruck describing the 40-year gap since the film’s release as “mind-boggling”.
You might also want to read: The Iconic Scene From ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ Was Born Out Of Pure Panic
