Start whipping up that strata: A sequel to The Family Stone is a go at Searchlight Pictures, and most of the original cast members are returning.
The follow-up is titled The Families Stone, and the cast includes Sarah Jessica Parker (Meredith Morton), Dermot Mulroney (Everett Stone), Claire Danes (Julie Morton), Rachel McAdams (Amy Stone), Craig T. Nelson (Kelly Stone), Luke Wilson (Ben Stone), Tyrone Giordano (Thad Stone), Brian White (Patrick Thomas), Elizabeth Reaser (Susannah Stone), and Paul Schneider (Brad Stevenson), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Thomas Bezucha, who wrote and directed 2005’s The Family Stone, is back to pen and helm the production of the sequel.
“Twenty years after their mother’s passing, the Stone family reunites for Christmas only to face the season’s biggest surprise: their father has unexpectedly invited the woman he’s fallen in love with to meet the family,” Searchlight says in a synopsis of the upcoming film.
In the original, Everett brings Meredith home to meet his family at Christmastime, but her buttoned-up personality puts her at odds with the freewheeling Stone family, including matriarch Sybil, played by the late Diane Keaton. Everything gets wrapped up in a bow by the end, but then a bittersweet fast-forward to the following Christmas reveals that Sybil has died in the interim.
The Family Stone earned nearly $93 million worldwide against a budget of $18 million, according to Box Office Mojo, and had critics divided at the time, per Metacritic. Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum said, “Parker has a great time being the anti–Carrie Bradshaw while Keaton-as-matriarch is a particular joy — funny, beautiful, elegant, touching, and at ease with a familiar, get-out-your-hankies holiday subplot,” But LA Weekly’s Ella Taylor called The Family Stone “a potentially interesting tale flailing haplessly in the quicksand of holiday-movie formula.”
The film has become a Christmas classic in the years since, however, and Bezucha told CNN in November 2025, a month after Keaton’s death, that he was working on the sequel. “I’ve been haunted by the loss of Sybil for months now while I worked on it, and so [Keaton’s death] 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.”