Eli Roth Is Making a ‘Thanksgiving’ Sequel

Everyone loves seconds on Thanksgiving. So why not a second Thanksgiving?

And, in fact, that is what is happening, with Eli Roth already directing that work has begun on a sequel to Thanksgiving, his recent slasher film which has become a solid critical and commercial hit in theaters this fall. So far the film has grossed $30 million worldwide, and ranked up a genuinely impressive 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics. (It’s Roth’s best reviewed film of his entire career.)

TriStar

According to the press release on the news, Thanksgiving was “started when [Roth and co-writer Jeff Rendell] were both kids going to see slasher films.” The concept first appeared as a phony trailer in Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 double feature that mimicked a night’s fare at an exploitation theater — including two full-length films and several trailers for movies that, at least at the time, did not actually exist. (Besides Thanksgiving, both Machete and Hobo With a Shotgun from Grindhouse have since gone on to become full-fledged features.) The first film is about a series of murders in a small Massachusetts town perpetrated by a mysterious killer in a John Carver mask.

Roth himself posted about the news on Instagram, writing “Thank you everyone who supported ORIGINAL HORROR in theaters!!!” He also noted that he and Rendell are going to write the screenplay together once again, but they are going to take a year to do it and “really get the script right.”

Thanksgiving 2 will open worldwide in 2025. The original Thanksgiving is still playing in theaters now.