Break out the lamb and bundt cakes, because My Big Fat Greek Wedding is getting a sequel!
More than ten years after the April 2002 release of the celebrated romantic comedy, the film's star and screenwriter, Nia Vardalos, announced on Tuesday, May 27, that a second movie is in the works.
Vardalos, 51, led My Big Fat Greek Wedding as Toula Portokalos, the daughter of a huge Greek family, who has been unlucky in love and is stuck in a job in her family's Greek restaurant. She turns her life around when she enrolls in computer classes at a local college and begins a new job at her family's travel agency, where she gets to know the man she later marries, Ian Miller, played by Sex and the City alum John Corbett.
The actress earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the script. The comedy was also nominated for Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2003.
Directed by Joel Zwick (Fat Albert) and also starring Joey Fatone, Michael Constantine, and Andrea Martin, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a sleeper hit at the box office. The movie filmed on just $5 million, but brought in $241.43 million at the domestic box office and an additional $127.3 million abroad for an international gross of $368.74 million.
In the 12 years since the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Vardalos has gone on to star in movies such as For a Good Time Call… and made cameos in hit TV shows including Grey's Anatomy and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She also adopted a daughter Ilaria, 9, with her husband Ian Gomez in 2008, which she cites as an inspiration for the upcoming sequel.
"Now that I’m experiencing motherhood, I’m ready to write the next chapter of my family story," she 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," she joked. "One of these things is true."
Vardalos will once again write the sequel to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman have signed on to produce. After the news broke, Vardalos tweeted, "Thank you for the love, yes the entire big fat family is invited back for the sequel."
