As the film's writer and director, John Hughes had a considerable influence over the making of The Breakfast Club, a film whose lasting success owes much to both its script and cast.
Having had success as a debut screenwriter with National Lampoon's Vacation, Hughes wrote the script for The Breakfast Club, believing it would be his debut as a director. However, while casting the film, he came across Molly Ringwald's headshot and wrote the script for Sixteen Candles, picturing her for the lead role she would eventually play. This film became his directorial debut in 1984. Hughes also cast Anthony Michael Hall, who played Rusty in National Lampoon's Vacation.
After filming Sixteen Candles, Hughes asked Ringwald and Hall if they would star in The Breakfast Club. Although Ringwald was originally cast as Allison Reynolds, she wanted to play the part of Claire Standish, so Hughes recast her. At $1 million, Hughes was given a relatively small budget for the project. To satisfy studio executives, he reduced costs by filming in a single shoot location and keeping the cast small. Hughes further saved costs by shooting Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) concurrently, using members of the same crew and sharing some filming locations.
After three weeks of rehearsals, Hughes shot the film in sequence, enhancing the realism of the characters' emotional arcs. In a testament to the director's faith in his cast, Hughes also asked the actors to improvise elements of the climactic scene in which the students sit on the ground and discuss what brought them to be in detention. In a 2010 interview with The New York Times, Ringwald discussed how Hughes was protective of her, and came into conflict with Judd Nelson when he tried to provoke Ringwald on set with teasing, staying in character as Bender. The conflict was resolved when the ensemble cast came together to defend Nelson and convince Hughes to not fire him—an ironic echo of the characters supporting Bender when he comes into conflict with Vice Principal Vernon.
With the film grossing $51.5 million—fifty-one times its budget—The Breakfast Club was a commercial success. Alongside Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles, the film contributed to Hughes's lasting reputation as an iconic director who knew how to capture the teenage experience. Each of the young actors in the cast was also launched to fame in the mid-1980s. They all became synonymous with the Brat Pack nickname, appearing together in several other popular films of the 1980s.
