Recently, rumours of a Heathers sequel entered heavy rotation, but no one really knew if the original filmmakers could possibly be that stupid to bring the remaining characters back to ruin the spirit of this much beloved cult film. Then, in Issue #241 of Empire Magazine, Winona Ryder issued an unequivocal statement:

Whatever you hear, there is a sequel in the works, I swear to God! There is a story, and Christian [Slater] has agreed to come back as a kind of Obi-Wan character.

Unsurprisingly, the almost unanimous response to this announcement was something along the lines of “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” Obviously, Ryder and Slater (whose career highlight of the past decade was a a “Tarable” Uwe Boll film are well past their sell dates, and there really aren’t any lingering bits of plot that weren’t blown to smithereens at the end of Heathers. Interestingly, director Michael Lehmann, speaking to Movieline, was equally perplexed by Winona’s proclamation:

Recently, there’s been a huge resurgence of Heathers sequel buzz. Is that rooted in anything real?
No. Winona’s been talking about this for years — she brings it up every once in a while and Dan Waters and I will joke about it, but as far as I know there’s no script and no plans to do the sequel. A couple weeks ago everyone started talking about it and I guess Winona said the movie was gonna get made, and I thought, “I don’t know, maybe they did this without me?” But I got in touch with Dan Waters and he said he didn’t know anything about it. So I don’t think there’s any truth to it.

Is it gratifying at least that so many people appear to want a sequel?
It’s funny to me. I love Heathers and I loved doing that movie. I’m very proud of it, so if it gets brought up, I’m happy. Generally, though, I don’t like sequels at all. If the movie’s good the first time, why bother? With something like The Matrix, for example, it feels like a trilogy, or with a comic-book movie, those movies were based on something that was created in a serial format. So a movie as specific as Heathers, which took place in a specific time and specific place and in which many of the characters got killed off, I never thought it made sense to see a sequel.

Yes, it turns out that Winona Ryder and Christian Slater really are the only two people in the entire world who believe that a Heathers sequel is a great idea. Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.