Boy Culture: Generation X is coming soon!

The long-awaited sequel to the romantic classic comes out on November 7.

Boy Culture: Generation X, the sequel to the trailblazing drama Boy Culture (2006), will release November 7 on all TV on-demand platforms.  

The original film’s stars Derek Magyar (X) and Darryl Stephens (Andrew) are returning in their iconic roles, as is the entire original creative team — director and co-writer Q. Allan Brocka, producers Stephen Israel and Philip Pierce and co-writer Matthew Rettenmund.

More than a decade after the events of the first film, Boy Culture: Generation X finds X and Andrew, the on-again, off-again couple, now both 40, broken up, and tensely sharing a home out of financial necessity. When X attempts to plunge back into his previous job as a sex worker, he’s in for a rude awakening — he’s no longer the flavor of the month, and the entire industry has been transformed by changing attitudes, online platforms and PreP.

X reluctantly turns to a bratty Gen Z twink named Chayce (Jason Caceres) to guide him back into the business.

Director and co-writer Brocka says the original film, cited among the 200 Best LGBTQ+ Movies of All Time by Rotten Tomatoes, resonated because it showed LGBTQ+ relationships “in a positive way that embraced our sexuality and sexual experiences. There were not a lot of films doing this unless they focused on our trauma.”

Of Boy Culture: Generation X, he says, “The original focused on taking a risk to find love. Now, X has had love, and something’s not quite working, so he’s got to refocus on himself — who is he outside of love?”

Derek Magyar says of returning as X, “I love the character, the writing, the director. We are a family. We had a table read and it was like nothing had changed, except for the fact that we’d gotten a bit older.”

With age comes wisdom, giving Magyar a chance to play a more vulnerable anti-hero. “I think X has grown a lot, and still has a lot to learn. I think he is well-intentioned, but I don’t think he is the best communicator and often gets himself in trouble. He goes back to hustling because it’s something he knows he is good at, and he wants to show Andrew he can handle taking care of his part of the life that they share — or shared.”

Darryl Stephens, recently seen on the Chuck Lorre sitcom B Positive, says, “When I heard Derek was coming back, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not only would the fans be able to see us together again after all these years, but my job in telling this story would be exponentially easier.”

The dynamic between X and Andrew is relatable because it’s built on truth. “We all reach that point in our lives where we are suddenly questioning what we believed was good enough,” Stephens offers. “And we wonder … is that all there is to love? Because that’s what we all deserve, right? To be happy with ourselves?”

Newcomer Jason Caceres, who plays Chayce, was a teen when the first movie released. “I was in high school,” he says, “and watched it at a highly inappropriate hour to avoid having any difficult conversations with the people in my life. I remember starving for any content that would help me understand what I was feeling.”

Times have changed, but queer youth are still starving for positive and realistic portrayals, and Boy Culture: Generation X pulls no punches in delivering both.

Matthew Rettenmund, author of the novel on which the films are based, and who co-wrote Boy Culture: Generation X with Q. Allan Brocka, says that along with aging among gay men, the new film “is even more diverse, and also talks a lot more about race, age-gap issues, the status of safer sex, bisexuality, social media image-making, cosplay … There is something startling and thought-provoking at every turn.”

Producer Philip Pierce says he hopes “viewers will take away a deeper understanding of the ways that sex, love and money impact their own lives. X’s profession as an older sex worker allows us to experience, both comedically and dramatically, a rather extreme version of these forces.”

Will X and Andrew come together once again, like they did at the end of the original film? Or is Boy Culture: Generation X the end? 

Boy Culture: Generation X is releasing via Dekkoo Films, a subsidiary of the Dekkoo streaming platform. It will be made available for TVOD rental across numerous platforms including Apple, Amazon, Google, and many others before arriving on the Dekkoo platform in 2024.