A 'Boyhood' Sequel? Richard Linklater Says It Could Happen

Ellar Coltrane and Richard Linklater on the Boyhood set

Director Richard Linklater filmed his Best Picture-nominated Boyhood over the course of 12 years, ending when his main character Mason (Ellar Coltrane) went off to college. But what if Linklater just kept on shooting through Mason’s adulthood? It could still happen. In a recent interview, the director admitted that he’s warming up to the idea of a Boyhood sequel.

“This film first met its audience exactly a year ago and for the first six months of the year, my answer to [the sequel question] was ‘Absolutely not’… I had no idea about another story, there’s nothing to say. It hadn’t crossed my mind,” Linklater told the podcast The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith (via The Playlist).

However, over the past year of promoting Boyhood, Linklater has started to change his tune. “I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘The twenties are pretty formative, you know?’” he said. “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].”

The director said that a potential sequel probably wouldn’t span 12 years, because that time frame was created specifically to span Mason’s school years. But he admitted that he’s been thinking back to his twenties in the same way that he thought about his childhood before making Boyhood, “just these random little memories about being in my twenties that might seem insignificant on paper, but telling and important.”

Of course, Linklater’s twenties were also the time that he started making movies. His first feature, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books, was completed in 1988 when Linklater was 28. That film — a meandering study of a guy traveling the West by train and starring Linklater himself — has never been officially released aside from its inclusion on the Criterion edition of Slacker, the director’s breakout indie from 1991. But it’s now up on YouTube if you want a look at early Linklater. (h/t Dangerous Minds)

As for that Boyhood sequel, fans shouldn’t hold their collective breath. Linklater notes that it took him five years to even start thinking about a sequel to Before Sunrise. (Before Sunset was release nine years after the first film, and Before Midnight nine years after that.) “This one would probably be more accelerated, but who knows,” he says. Linklater’s next movie, the “wild party comedy” That’s What I’m Talking About, will be released later this year.

Watch the trailer for Boyhood: