The 2006 teen comedy has become a cult classic with movie fans
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NEED TO KNOW
- Jesse Metcalfe caught up with PEOPLE exclusively at CLD PR’s New York Fashion Week kickoff event on Sept. 11
- He revealed which of his John Tucker Must Die costars he would like to reunite with on screen
- The 2006 teen comedy has become a cult classic among movie fans
Jesse Metcalfe says he’d love to share the screen with some of his John Tucker Must Die costars again.
The 47-year-old actor caught up with PEOPLE exclusively at CLD PR’s New York Fashion Week kickoff event on Sept. 11 and revealed who from the 2006 teen comedy’s cast he’d be keen to work with on a new project.
“I’d love to work with Arielle Kebbel again. I mean, we have a nice rapport. We speak occasionally,” he said. “I’d be open to working with Penn Badgley, too. I think he’s a really, really great guy. I got the opportunity to be on his podcast before he shut it down, just because he got busy with other things.”
“I really love the entire cast. I’m always open to reconnect with them,” Metcalfe continued, adding, “Yeah, I’d love to work with Brittany Snow again.”
He noted how Snow, 40, is having “an incredible moment” right now in her career with recent hit series including The Hunting Wives, The Beast in Me and Murdaugh: Death in the Family.
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John Tucker Must Die, which has become a cult classic among movie fans, stars Metcalfe as John, a high school basketball star who is seeing three girls at the same time and convinces each of them to keep the relationship secret by claiming he’s not allowed to date during basketball season. The three girls — played by Kebbel, Ashanti and Sophia Bush — find out about John’s deception and, with help from Snow’s character, plot together to publicly humiliate him.
Addressing a potential John Tucker Must Die sequel, Metcalfe told PEOPLE that “there is a sequel script over at 20th Century Fox that [Kebbel] was attempting to spearhead.”
“It seems to have lost a little momentum, but I like the script, and I do think there’s an appetite for a sequel,” he said. “I don’t necessarily know if it’s going to get over the finish line or not, and I’m not really losing any sleep over it, but it would certainly be fun to participate in that.”
Kebbel, 41, revealed in March 2024 that she was working on a sequel and was producing the film. She said during an Epic Cons Chicago reunion panel alongside Metcalfe and Bush, 44, that there was a script that “does involve all of the O.G. cast.”
Credit: Globe Photos/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
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This year, she later gave an update on the sequel on the Feb. 19 episode of the Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe podcast.
“So I started producing a few years ago. One of the first projects I ever sold was a sequel to John Tucker, which was very exciting, and the whole cast was back on board,” Kebbel said. “We worked with the studio for a while, and then we got a script in right before the writers’ strike.”
Kebbel shared that after the strike, the project was supposed to “full-force move forward into casting,” but then the studio’s slate “totally changed.”
“You know, that happens,” she explained. “That’s the game with studios and the film business. But it got ‘shelved,’ which is not a permanent thing, but it is not currently active.”
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Still, Kebbel added, “I have faith, you know? The moment will come. But it’s on pause for now.”
The original film marks its 20th anniversary this year. Ahead of the milestone, Metcalfe reflected on the experience of making the movie, telling PEOPLE in March 2025, “That whole experience is just kind of burned into my memory.”
“There were some defining moments on that movie,” he added, singling out one particular scene in which his character is tricked into wearing a lace thong only to be humiliated in front of his entire high school basketball team.
“Wearing women’s underwear in front of the entire cast and about 50 background players and crew — that was interesting,” Metcalfe joked.
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