More than four decades after helping define a generation, one of the Brat Pack’s most iconic movies could be headed back to the big screen. Rob Lowe is giving fans fresh hope for the film’s long-awaited return. The update comes more than 40 years after the original film became a defining hit of the mid-’80s.
Which Brat Pack Movie is Returning for a Sequel?
Rob Lowe revealed to Kelly Clarkson that there is a sequel in the works for the 1985 feature film, “St. Elmo’s Fire.” He starred in the coming-of-age film alongside Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham, and Andie MacDowell.
“I’m trying to get it done, but I’m excited,” he revealed. “I think the reason that ‘St. Elmo’s’ continues to mean a lot to people because it’s such a great snapshot of your 20s.”
He revealed the team is “working on” a script. “Everyone wants to do it. We just need to get the script right, and that’s what we’re working on.”
This update comes after a 2024 interview Lowe had with Entertainment Tonight. He shared at that time that the film was in the early stages of conception.
“We’ve met with the studio. I have been talking about doing it,” Lowe said. “But it’s very, very, very, very, very early stages. So we will see.”
“St. Elmo’s Fire” was directed by Joel Schumacher. Additionally, the script was co-written by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander. The movie focused on friends who navigated the time period between graduating from college, finding jobs, and starting their lives.
Why Were The Stars of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ Called ‘The Brat Pack?’
“St. Elmo’s Fire” helped cement the “Brat Pack” moniker coined by journalist David Blum in a June 1985 New York Magazine cover story.
Blum invented the name, a play on the 1950s “Rat Pack” which included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. He called the young actors the “brat pack” due to their ages and their popularity in the mid-1980s.
The writer told Vulture, “I figured my cover story — with ‘Hollywood’s Brat Pack’ splashed above a publicity still from St. Elmo’s Fire that fortuitously caught Estevez, [Judd] Nelson and [Rob] Lowe in a bar, grinning and hoisting brewskis — would likely annoy these young stars for a few days, and perhaps cause some brief agita among Hollywood publicists who tend to want to control the stories that come out about their clients,” Blum wrote. “Nothing prepared me for the firestorm of attention that resulted.”
He concluded, “But I didn’t hear from anyone directly and still assumed that whatever problems I might have created would blow over. I learned much later that the Brat Pack’s agents and publicists had immediately ordered their clients to avoid one another at all costs.”
Andrew McCarthy later reclaimed the label for his Hulu documentary, “Brats.” The documentary explores how the term shaped the careers and personal lives of the actors it came to define.
