Today in news that sounds way too good to be true but it is true: Reese Witherspoon is abandoning NFTs and reprising the role of the hardworking, very annoying, but also relentlessly charming Tracy Flick from the 1999 film Election in a sequel for Paramount+. Variety reports that the film is titled Tracy Flick Can’t Win and will debut on the streaming service Paramount+. The original film’s co-writer and director Alexander Payne is returning as a writer and director. Payne is co-writing the film with Jim Taylor.
In the 1999 film, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name, Witherspoon played high school student Tracy Flick, who runs an intense campaign for school president. A social studies teacher played by Matthew Broderick attempts to sabotage her campaign. The movie received an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay, Witherspoon was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, and it won the Indie Spirit Award for best film.
The sequel will be adapted from Perrotta’s follow-up novel (also called Tracy Flick Can’t Win), which came out in June 2022. Here’s a description of the book, from its publisher Simon and Schuster:
Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy to ascend to the top job. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal, determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and School Board, while also managing her personal life—a ten-year-old daughter, a needy doctor boyfriend, and a burgeoning meditation practice.
Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter will produce the film for Hello Sunshine, a Candle Media company, alongside Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa of Bona Fide Productions, with Perrotta executive producing.
(Via Variety)
