After 20 years, The Family Stone is due for a big holiday reunion as the cast and crew mourn the death of onscreen matriarch Diane Keaton.
Thomas Bezucha, who wrote and directed the 2005 holiday film, recently revealed that he’s penning a sequel to the ensemble classic, after Keaton (who starred as Sybil Stone) died at age 79 last month.
“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,” Bezucha told CNN. “Mentally, I’ve been spending time in that house where I’ve been missing her for a while already.”
After Keaton’s death, Bezucha wants to get the sequel right “do a good job by the rest of the cast,” noting he wants to “honor her even more.”
While nobody has officially signed on to reprise their roles, he noted that he reached out to the original cast, all of whom had a positive response to news of a sequel. “I’m not interested in the Brady family reunion without the original Jan,” said Bezucha.
Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘The Family Stone’ (2005) (20th Century Fox Film Corp.)
In The Family StoneSybil and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) host their adult kids (Dermot Mulroney, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson and Elizabeth Reaser) for the holidays, as she prepares to tell the family about her terminal illness. The visit is complicated by Everett’s (Mulroney) plans to propose to his high-strung girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker), of whom Sybil does not approve.
Following Keaton’s death on Oct. 11, her family revealed that she died of pneumonia.
