10 Years Later, Glen Powell’s Cult Classic Hangout Movie Has Aged Like Fine Wine

Image via Annapurna

Here in 2026, Glen Powell is one of the most popular movie stars around. He has spent the last few years as a force at the box office, starring in hits like Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and Twisters. Powell’s star is only burning brighter as time goes on, but his best movie actually came out 10 years ago. A Richard Linklater hangout movie that serves as a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!! is not just the vehicle for Powell’s breakout role, it’s also a perfect ensemble comedy that only gets better with age.

March 30th marks the 10-year anniversary of the Everybody Wants Some!! release, which was unfortunately overlooked back in 2016. Despite coming from an iconic filmmaker like Linklater, and its ties to a beloved film like Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some!! failed to break even at the box office, making around $5.4 million in its entire theatrical run. Folks didn’t get the memo that they were missing a classic in the making while it was in theaters, but the last decade has seen the film’s popularity rise significantly — no doubt helped by the evolution of Powell and co-stars like Zoey Deutch, Wyatt Russell, and Austin Amelio.

In an entertainment landscape that doesn’t feature nearly enough great comedy nowadays, Everybody Wants Some!! stands out from the crowd. It’s the movie that Powell often refers to as his favorite film he’s ever been a part of — a sentiment shared by pretty much everyone who was involved in its production. If you haven’t seen Everybody Wants Some!!, its 10th birthday is the perfect excuse to kick back with the best movie you didn’t know you were missing.

‘Dazed and Confused’ 2.0

The cast of Everybody Wants Some!!

Linklater perfected the art of the hangout movie with 1993’s Dazed and Confused, which remains one of the most acclaimed and beloved comedies of the ’90s. The film follows a gaggle of high school kids on the final day of the school year, as they prepare for the start of summer and wrestle with the idea of growing up. It’s a hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age movie with arguably one of the best young casts this side of Freaks and Geeks. Dazed and Confused featured breakout performances from Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Cole Hauser, Milla Jovovich, and Matthew McConaughey.

Everybody Wants Some!! was developed as the “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused, and it checks all the same boxes. Instead of following high schoolers at the start of summer, this movie is about a college baseball team at the end of it. The film begins the weekend before fall classes start, as members of the school’s baseball team move in and try their best to get the full college experience. If most movies are like roller coasters, taking you on a rigid ride through the ups and downs of a story, Everybody Wants Some!! is a lazy river, meant for you to simply float along as you become pals with its cast of eccentric characters.

And that cast of characters is brought to life by a stellar mix of professional actors, amateurs, and real baseball players. Powell is the biggest name to come from the film, but the aforementioned Deutch, Russell, and Amelio have all become stars in their own right in the years since. Tyler Hoechlin was already pretty well-known before the movie, while Blake Jenner and Ryan Guzman have had solid TV careers of their own.

Honestly, the lesser-experienced cast members often provide some of the best and most hilarious moments of the film. Will Britain, J. Quinton Johnson, Temple Baker, Tanner Kalina, Juston Street, and Forrest Vickery are all exceptional, creating such lived-in characters that you will want to keep hanging out long after the movie ends.

A True Hangout Movie

There aren’t a ton of real hangout movies out there, but Everybody Wants Some!! represents one of the underrated genre’s very best. These guys feel real, and their relationships with one another come off as incredibly genuine. That’s because, for the most part, they really are.

To capture the essence of a hangout movie, and to get the chemistry of a real college team just right, Linklater went the extra mile with the cast of Everybody Wants Some!! The members of the team spent weeks at Linklater’s farm in Texas, doing nothing but playing baseball and hanging out together. Their friendships and chemistry became very real over the course of the film’s production, and that comes through in the final product. So much of what you see in the actual movie is improvised on some level, with so many great moments occurring naturally as the cast settled into their characters.

In fact, their real-life chemistry at the farm influenced how Linklater put the movie together. When he saw certain sparks between cast-mates as they hung out, he would adjust the script to have them share the screen more often. The production of Everybody Wants Some!! could provide a blueprint for getting comedy back on the right track — if more directors were willing to take the right notes.

Everybody Wants Some!! is a hidden gem and a growing cult classic, the kind of movie that knows exactly how to embrace its inner strange, man. It brings what it is, never what people think they want. And that, my friend, is what makes it so fun.