Jean Smart joins the sequel to The Family Stone

Jean Smart will join The Families Stone.The film is a sequel to the 2005 holiday comedy The Family Stone and is distributed by Searchlight Pictures.Smart just won her fifth and final Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks.

The report lists The Families Stone as Smart's first confirmed new role since Hacks ended.She will enter a new relationship with Craig T. Nelson's character in the sequel, which revolves around the reunion of the Stone family.

The sequel is set twenty years after the original film.After Sybil Stone's death, the Stone family was reunited by the incident.Smart stars as Craig T. Nelson's character who takes his new crush home to meet her family at Christmas.

The cast of the original film will return in large numbers.Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Dermot Maloney, Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, Tyrone Giordano, Elizabeth Reaser, Paul Schneider and Brian White will all reprise their original roles.

Sybil, played by Diane Keaton, was an important character in the original film.Reports indicate that Keaton passed away last October and will not be involved in the sequel.The new film writes the death of her character into the background of the story, and uses this family reunion as the starting point of the plot.

Tom Bezucha will return as writer and director.When he directed The Family Stone in 2005, it was only his second feature film, the previous one being Big Eden.He later filmed Monte Carlo and Let Him Go, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for directing the Fargo episode.

2005's The Family Stone was released by 20th Century Fox and grossed $92 million at the global box office.The original film tells the story of a career-minded woman played by Parker who visits her boyfriend's family for the first time and spends the holidays in front of the Stone family, who have distinctive personalities and direct judgments.The film went on to become a frequently rewatched piece of holiday comedy.

The new version is produced by Michael London and Shannon Golding on behalf of Groundswell Productions.Parker will also produce via Pretty Matches Productions with Alison Benson.Searchlight Pictures vice president of production Tyler Friedman and creative executive Daniel Yu are overseeing the project.

Smart has mainly focused on TV series work in recent years.The report mentioned that her last starring movie was Babylon and Wildflower in 2022.She will also appear in the Amazon-MGM Pictures romantic comedy Egg Baby.

《The Families Stone》(The Families Stone) has now confirmed the main returning cast, Smart's new role and Bezucha's return to direct.The filming date and release date of the film have not yet been announced with this casting news.