Thomas Bezucha, the writer-director of beloved Christmas movie The Family Stone, has revealed he is working on a sequel and hopes to “honor” the film’s late star Diane Keaton.
Keaton, who starred in a number of classic movies including The Godfather, Annie Hall and Father of the Bride, died in October at the age of 79.
In the original 2005 film she played matriarch Sybil Stone, leading a star-studded ensemble cast that included Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams, Claire Danes and Dermot Mulroney. The plot follows the family as they come to term with Sybil’s terminal diagnosis and eventual death.
In a new interview with CNN, Bezucha said he was already at work on a sequel script when he learned that Keaton had died.
“I’ve been haunted by the loss of Sybil for months now while I worked on it, and so this was a blow on a tender bruise already,” he said. “Mentally, I’ve been spending time in that house where I’ve been missing her for a while already.”
Bezucha added that Keaton’s death had made him focus on doing “a good job by the rest of the cast,” and encouraged him to “honor her even more.”
The sequel has not yet been put into production, so it is unknown who from the original cast might return. However, Bezucha said he would only want to go ahead with the film if he could reunite the film’s stars, joking: “I’m not interested in the Brady family reunion without the original Jan.”
The 2005 film performed well at the box office, making almost $93 million worldwide against a budget of $18 million, and has gone on to become a perennial festive favorite.
However, it was not received well by all critics when it was originally released. In a scathing review for The Independent, critic Anthony Quinn wrote: “As a tribute to touchy-feely family values, only Cameron Crowe's recent Elizabethtown could top this for sheer falseness and vacuity. Try not to squirm as the various Stone siblings' Christmas homecoming becomes a kind of liberal fantasist's parade of pieties - deafness, gayness, racial togetherness and that old standby terminal illness are all embraced at the family hearth.
“The drama, if it can so be called, pivots on oldest son Dermot Mulroney introducing the family (headed by Diane Keaton) to his uptight New York girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) and then promptly falling for her younger and funnier sister (Claire Danes).
“I get the feeling that the writer-director Thomas Bezucha hoped this might be a modern take on that evergreen heartwarmer Meet Me in St Louis, but there's no way you'll have yourself a merry little Christmas watching this tripe.”
