Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still
Wed 19 August 2026 22:30, UK
Usually, when a film is very popular, and if it makes sense, there’s clamour for a sequel to be commissioned and made as soon as possible. Occasionally, there are considerable gaps between the first and second movies in a franchise, and another one may well be on the way with Rob Lowe.
A few of the record holders in this regard are Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins Returns, which was some 54 years in the making, Top Gun and Top Gun 2, with a gap of 36 years, and Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, which took 35 years for producers to organise.
But if, as reports are suggesting, we get a St Elmo’s Fire 2, then we’d be at 41 years and counting since the 1980s’ Brat Pack got together as Washington graduates trying to work out what on earth to do with their lives after University. Lowe starred alongside Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, and Andie MacDowell in the rom-com, directed by Joel Schumacher, and although critics described it as ‘vacuous’, it still did well at the box office.
While Lowe and the others are apparently working on a script for a sequel, he has been making the most of his longevity in Hollywood, a career that has not come without its ups and downs to say the least. He was an undoubted A-lister at an incredibly young age, just 19 when he starred in 1983’s teen drama The Outsiders, helmed by Francis Ford Coppola, but worked prolifically through that decade before the wheels came off when he was caught up in a sex tape scandal in 1988.
His career didn’t really recover for another ten years after that debacle, despite the occasional great work, like in Wayne’s World. The vast majority of his movies in the 1990s went straight to video, until he was cast as Sam Seaborn in the hugely successful HBO political drama The West Wing in 1999.
That got things back on track in a big way; Lowe earned two Golden Globe nominations in consecutive years for the show and an Emmy nod the year after that. TV continued to provide him with the roles he needed to get both critical and commercial acclaim, and in 2010, he was cast as a series regular on the hit comedy show Parks and Recreation, which he followed up in 2011 with the David Duchovny comedy-drama Californication.
In it, he played Eddie Nero, an actor who is set to portray Duchovny’s hard-drinking writer Hank Moody in the movie of his life, and although he only appeared in six episodes of the FX series over a three-year span, he told a Reddit AMA that it was one of the best times of his career.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Lowe said at the time: “Eddie is one of my all-time favourite roles. I could play Eddie Nero for 100 years. And NEVER get bored. I will miss him SO MUCH when Californication ends. But he is based on all of the demented, pretentious, intellectual, sexually confused, A-list Academy Award winning movie stars that I know.”
Lowe moved on to doing a legal comedy called The Grinder with former Wonder Years star Fred Savage, and it proved successful, with the actor picking up his fifth Golden Globe shout. Still, he was 97 years short when it came to Nero, but at least he made the most of those cherished three while he could.
