If you left Boyhood wanting more, Richard Linklater’s next film That’s What I’m Talking About should fill that void.
After Boyhood, writer/director Richard Linklater had the opportunity to do just about anything he wanted. He chose to make That’s What I’m Talking About, and the success of Boyhood allowed for Linklater to finally get the film financed.
That’s What I’m Talking About has previously been described as a spiritual successor to Dazed and Confused, one of Linklater’s best films. Based on this description and Linklater’s fantastic output of late, this writer named the film as his most anticipated film of 2015.
Speaking to Creative Screenwriting, Linklater is describing That’s What I’m Talking About in a new way:
“Well, I think the word ‘spiritual’ gets me off the hook,” Linklater says of people having too high of expectations based on the Dazed and Confused connection. “I just shot it and wrapped it recently, and it has nothing to do with Dazed and Confused other than it would be set four years later, when one of the younger characters went off to college. It’s a party film. It’s really about the beginning of school, not the end of the school year. I guess personally or autobiographically it’s kind of in that realm, but it’s also a continuation of Boyhood, believe it or not. I don’t know if one film can be a sequel to two different movies, but it begins right where Boyhood ends with a guy showing up at college and meeting his new roommates and a girl. It overlaps with the end of Boyhood.”
This is sounding increasingly interesting. In theme and story, it sounds like more of a successor to Boyhood given that it’s dealing with a new freshman in college, but the characters in the film will have lived in the world that the Dazed and Confused characters lived in.
That’s What I’m Talking About stars Wyatt Russell, Glen Powell, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, Adriene Mishler, Kyla Burke, Jessi Mechler, and Jonathan Breck, among others. None are currently huge stars but neither were Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck when they starred in Dazed and Confused.
Though That’s What I’m Talking About does not currently have a release date, it’s expected to drop sometime in the second half of 2015.