Reese Witherspoon is going back to high school to star in Tracy Flick Can’t Win, a sequel to 1999’s Election that will find the indomitable Flick as a stressed-out but still ambitious assistant principal.
As Variety reports, the film is based on Tom Perrotta’s book of the same name, which he published earlier this year as a follow-up to his own novel, 1998’s Election. The new movie is set to debut on Paramount+, and will be directed by Election filmmaker Alexander Payne, who will co-write the script with Jim Taylor.
Election proved that Witherspoon was a rising star and established Payne as an in-demand actor’s director, paving the way for such films as About Schmidt and Sideways. It followed the Type-A Tracy as she campaigned to become school president despite the sabotage of her social studies teacher, played by Matthew Broderick.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win finds the middle-aged character attempting to balance her duties as a mother and her relationship with a needy doctor boyfriend with her disappointment with her career: an assistant principle at an undistinguished suburban high school. But when the school principal unexpectedly announces his retirement, her old ambition comes flaring back, and she must once again play school politics and hope that those with the power to vote decide to Pick Flick.
Witherspoon will produce under her own Hello Sunshine banner alongside Perrotta, Lauren Neustadter, and Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa of Bona Fide Productions.
Payne’s last movie was 2017’s Downsizing, and his next project will be directing his Sideways collaborator Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers. Witherspoon is currently filming the next season of The Morning Show, and she’s also committed to producing an adaptation of Dolly Parton’s latest album, Run, Rose, Run, and to co-starring alongside Will Ferrell in a wedding comedy for Amazon.