Announced by Searchlight Pictures, The Families Stone will reunite Sarah Jessica Parker’s Meredith Morton with most of the original’s stacked cast, including Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson, Tyrone Giordano, Elizabeth Reaser, Paul Schneider, and Brian White. Thomas Bezucha is also returning as writer-director, making this reunion feel like one big Christmas-sweater-squishing group hug.
Missing, obviously, is co-star Diane Keaton, who died in October 2025, though her presence as family matriarch Sybil Stone will still be felt in the sequel, according to a description of the film’s plot provided by Deadline. (*Spoilers for a twenty-year-old film*) “[The Families Stone] picks up twenty years after [Sybil’s] death, as the Stone family again reunites for Christmas, only to face the season’s biggest surprise: Their father (Nelson) has unexpectedly invited the woman he’s fallen in love with to meet the family.” Such a development will no doubt spark inter-family drama and hijinks that complement the tone of the original film, in which Everett Stone (Mulroney) introduces his prim, all-business girlfriend to his eccentrically bohemian family over Christmas.
In her “When Romance Met Comedy” column, The A.V. Club contributor Caroline Siede wrote, “I get why The Family Stone is something of an acquired taste, but I also think it’s one worth acquiring.” Something to consider for the unconverted as the holidays near.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.