2014 was the year of Boyhood, as Richard Linklater’s long-gestating project to chronicle the growing years of one young man and his family came to successful fruition and began scooping up awards by the armful. Linklater is now in post-production on his latest effort, That’s What I’m Talking About, which he has already described as a “spiritual sequel” to one of his earliest films, Dazed And Confused. Now, though, he’s also thinking it’ll serve a similar purpose for **Boyhood.
That’s What I’m Talking About is set four years after the events of 1993’s Dazed, although it doesn’t directly feature any of the characters from the film – so don’t go raising your hopes for a Matthew McConaugcameo. Instead, it’s set across a single weekend and follows a college freshman arriving at his seat of learning and figuring out his new world. But while you won’t also see Ellar Coltrane’s Mason from Boyhood crop up (since the movie takes place in the early 1980s), Linklater feels there’s a, well, a link.
“I think the word ‘spiritual’ gets me off the hook,” he tells Creative Screenwriting. “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.”
He wouldn’t be drawn on when it might hit screens, but we can expect it to arrive later this year.