Described as a spiritual sequel to beloved coming-of-age drama Dazed and Confused, Paramount and Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures have rolled out the first trailer for Richard Linklater’s festival hopeful Everybody Wants Some, inviting you on a trip down memory lane.
Having assembled a cast that includes Will Brittain, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell and Zoey Deutch, Linklater’s love letter to the ’80s follows a group of college baseball players that spend more time indulging in booze and parties than they do pushing pencils for higher grades.
Written and directed by Linklater himself, eagle-eyed fans of the filmmaker will be able to spot some callbacks to Dazed and Confused in today’s snippet, namely the baseball hazing that finds the lead group tied up and facing a gruelling initiation process. Indeed, Linklater has a deeply personal connection with Everybody Wants Some, as it’s loosely based on his time spent at Sam Houston State University during his own youth.
Here’s what he had to share about some of the ways in which the two films can dovetail together:
“I, for instance, wasn’t a pitcher,” he says of one of his leading characters, played by Blake Jenner (Glee). “I was an outfielder. I just thought pitcher was more active than standing around the outfield. If you look at Mitch, Wiley Wiggins’s character in Dazed who pitches in that pony league game, this is him, four years later, going off to college. Say he got better at baseball and he’s off to college. It would be right then — 1980.”
Poised to make its bow in Linklater’s home town of Austin, Texas, Everybody Wants Some will have its worldwide premiere at the SXSW (South By Southwest) film festival in 2016, with a limited theaterical release planned for further down the line.
