Thanksgiving 2, the follow-up to Eli Roth's holiday horror Thanksgiving, is in soft prep with a screenplay written and ready to go, the director shared with IndieWire over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Roth also shared that the slasher sequel will see several actors from the first movie returning, and that the budget is intentionally being low for creativity reasons:
“We’re upping the ante but we are not going to do it with more money […] That keeps it tight and lean and mean and forces us to make decisions. There’s a lot of setting up that we did in the first one that we don’t have to deal with now. It can just be all pay-off.”
Released in November of last year, Thanksgiving starred Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon and Tim Dillon, and revolved around a slasher by the name of John Carver who begins murdering the people of Plymouth, MA one year after a deadly accident on Black Friday. The slasher was based on a fake trailer that Roth created back in 2007 for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse.
Thanksgiving was a big box office success, racking up around $46 million off a $15 million budget, pretty much ensuring itself a sequel as fast as you can say ‘overcooked turkey'.
Roth also shared that he wants to get bigger and bolder with the murder set pieces and chase sequences of Thanksgiving 2, citing 1995's Mute Witness as an inspiration:
“I’ve come up with stuff that is going to be a challenge. And I want it to be a challenge to pull off. Because if I’ve come up with the stuff that I think will make the best kills, then I’m going to do it like I’m never going to make another movie again.”
Despite what Roth says, you can't keep a good slasher down – it's not a wild stretch of the imagination to imagine Thanksgiving spawning more sequels and becoming a bigger franchise. After all, if Roth's final quote here is anything to go by, he'll want to bless fans with more and more traditions as the years go by:
“It really was a reminder of the deep satisfaction I get just knowing there is a Thanksgiving movie out there and that people enjoy it and that people are now watching the old slasher films because of it […] I feel like we have a new tradition. And that’s all you want to do is leave your mark — good or bad — on pop culture. Eventually, no one is going to remember. The only thing that will be left is the movies.”
Thanksgiving 2 releases sometime in 2025 (presumably November) – we'll bring you more updates as we get them.
