IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Andrew McCarthy on a ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ sequel and ‘seeing old friends again’

“We’ve all grown up since then.”
/ Source: TODAY

If hearing the names Alec, Billy and Jules make you feel like heading to the neighborhood bar with John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" on full volume, then you're probably one of millions of '80s kids whose adolescence was defined by movies like "Pretty in Pink," "Less Than Zero" and, of course, the coming-of-age drama, "St. Elmo's Fire."

What do they have in common? Andrew McCarthy for starters.

"They actually still have some kind of life to them, which is interesting and unlikely," McCarthy says. "So, they're not calcified entirely."

In fact, far from being antiquated, the '80s movies serve as cultural placeholders of an era, much like McCarthy himself and a handful of his contemporaries, like Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore, who will forever be associated with the handful of films they made together and their infamous nickname: The Brat Pack.

Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer
Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald and Jon Cryer in "Pretty in Pink."Everett Collection

It’s a moniker that stuck after a writer coined the term in an unflattering 1985 magazine article.

These days, however, the name is more iconic than anything, and along with the movies they filmed, the Brat Packers remain in the collective public eye.

"I do think it's interesting," McCarthy tells TODAY.com. "(Those movies) were a touchstone for a generation."

And that generation appears more interested than ever in its on-screen alumni, which led McCarthy to write a memoir on his experience in 2021 called "Brat: An '80s Story."

"It made me look at my own youth," McCarthy says of penning the book. "I realized I'd never talked to anybody else, and it was such a seminal, life-altering experience for me when I was young and I thought it must have been for (the other Brat Packers), too."

The revelation inspired him to reach out to his former castmates for a new documentary he's working on about the so-called "Brat Pack" years, which he says is slated for release later this year.

"I wanted to go back and talk to everybody. I didn't know that no one had talked about it with each other," he says.

For a preview (and a heaping dose of nostalgia), just take a look at McCarthy's Instagram, and you'll see the actor posing with old chums like Lowe, Moore and Estevez, whom he says he hadn't seen for more than 30 years.

While reports circulated in 2019 of a modern reboot of“St. Elmo’s Fire” in the works at NBC, that project is no longer in development, according to the network.

But all the throwback photos of the actor with his former “St. Elmo’s Fire” cohorts beg the obvious question. Could there ever be a sequel?

Think a "Big Chill" sort of reunion that picks up the lives of the old college friends Kevin (McCarthy), Jules (Moore), Billy (Lowe), Leslie (Sheedy), Kirby (Estevez), Alec (Judd Nelson), Wendy (Mare Winningham) and even Dr. Dale (Andie MacDowell).

"We've all grown up since then," McCarthy says. "So, it would be interesting to revisit them and be like people going back to old friends and seeing old friends again and taking stock on how they've evolved."

McCarthy says that a new film could give the '80s characters relevance rather than just looking back at them as "the avatars of that generation's youth."

"To bring that into the present is an interesting concept," he says.

Will it happen?

"I'd be curious about it," he says. "I don't know that everyone else would."