The headline does not lie: Domino’s has created a new ad campaign for its Pizza Tracker based around 1986 John Hughes comedy flick Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Joe Keery — who we all know as Steve from Stranger Things and guitarist of Chicago psych-pop band Post Animal — is playing the lead role made famous by Matthew Broderick.
The idea, as Adage reports, is based around Domino’s promoting is tracker technology, which allows people who order their pizza real-time updates on when it was made and when it will be delivered. Keery, as Bueller, runs through a bunch of the ’80s film’s classic scenes — but with updated modern technology, of course.
Because yes, we all know that life moves pretty fast.
“We know that customers find the Domino’s Tracker to be a fun part of ordering from Domino’s, so we tried to capture their excitement in this new ad,” says Domino’s Vice President of Advertising Karen Kaiser in a statement via Adage.
Keery playing Broderick appears to be no sweat, even though the Stranger Things breakout star — who brings Post Animal to Brighton Music Hall in Allston on May 17 — was born six years after Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hit the screen.
“We knew for sure that [if] that actor that was going to take the place of Ferris Bueller, he had to be great,” says Tony Calcao of CP&B, which created the ad, also via Adage. “This being an iconic movie we knew we had to pay homage to it and not deviate, not change it and put our own kind of spin on it outside of using Joe Keery and maybe making it a modern adaptation.”
Alan Ruck, who played Bueller’s BFF Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, appears in the spots as Keery’s dad. Adage reports that the shorter versions of the online ads will run as TV spots, and they got permission under license from Paramount Pictures to recreate scenes from the film under one condition — Domino’s could not use the words “Ferris Bueller” in any of the spots.
Sorry, Ben Stein.