"My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" Set for March 2016

[JamesG]

Back to the Altar with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
by MIKE FLEMING JR
May 27, 2014


Some 12 years after it was released and became one of the biggest independent films of its era, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is getting a feature sequel from Gold Circle, HBO and Playtone.

Nia Vardalos, who wrote the first, has scripted the second installment and will star with John Corbett, her groom in the original Joel Zwick-directed romantic comedy. Also back is the brash Portokalos family.





Rita Wilson is producing with Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, with Gold Circle’s Paul Brooks exec producing with Scott Niemeyer, Norm Waitt, Steven Shareshian and Nia Vardalos.

Good Universe is handling international sales.





That is a long wait for a sequel, but the original reflected the sensibilities of Vardalos, and it took time for her to find the second installment.

“Now that I’m experiencing motherhood, I’m ready to write the next chapter of my family story,” Vardalos said in a statement. “Of course a few jaded folks in the press corps will claim I ran out of money or just want to kiss John Corbett again. One of these things is true.”

The actress just published the book Instant Mom and is writing to star in Leftovers for Paramount.

http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/back...eek-wedding-2/

[JamesG]

Nia Vardalos Talks My Big Fat Greek Wedding Sequel Delay, Possible 3rd Film
by Hilary Lewis
8/14/15


Thirteen years after My Big Fat Greek Wedding hit theaters, grossed $241 million at the domestic box office and became one of the most successful indies of all time, it is finally getting a sequel.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, directed by Kirk Jones, is set to hit theaters in March.

NBC's "Today" show took viewers to the set of the "Greekquel," as star Nia Vardalos says she and her colleagues have been calling the film, to chat with Vardalos and co-star John Corbett about the long-awaited follow-up.





So why did it take Vardalos — who based the first film on her own life growing up in a Greek household and marrying a non-Greek — so long to do a sequel? It turns out she felt like she couldn't authentically write about Toula and Ian's next step of starting a family because she hadn't experienced that for herself.

"The reason I didn't want to do the sequel is because at the end of the first one, I had written that we were parents," Vardalos told Today's Savannah Guthrie. "And even though I make stuff up, I couldn't write from a place of emotions that I didn't know because I wasn't a mom — and then I became a mom, so instantly, so suddenly."

Vardalos and her husband, fellow actor Ian Gomez, adopted a little girl in 2008.





Corbett didn't have to be convinced to return for a sequel.

"The truth is, I didn't think it was over," Corbett told "Today". "After a decade of hearing, 'Hmm, I don't know, I don't have any ideas really,' I just sort of gave up. And so it was really a huge surprise when — I guess just about this time last year — [Nia] called and said, 'I got an idea. What do you think? Do you want to do it?' And nobody on this team was happier than me."

In fact, Corbett told "Today", he thinks there's enough material for a third film, and Vardalos said that she "whispered an idea in his ear the other night for number three."



But not only is she not revealing what that idea was, she's staying mum on the plot for the second film.

"If we tell you what the sequel is about, then we have to stuff you in our trunk of a car, and take you out back to Arizona, and you'd have to live in your mom's basement … until March," Vardalos said.





But "Today" did reveal a little of what happens in the movie and showed that Vardalos' real-life family members are playing extras.

Universal is releasing the sequel in the U.S. and several foreign territories.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...wedding-815468