The Stone family’s next Christmas gathering is taking shape, and the guest list is filled with familiar faces.
The Families Stone, the sequel to the 2005 holiday film The Family Stone, has set much of its returning cast, with Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T. Nelson and more coming back for a story set 20 years after the events of the original movie.
Thomas Bezucha, who wrote and directed The Family Stone, is also returning to write and direct the follow-up.
The returning ensemble includes Danes as Julie Morton, McAdams as Amy Stone, Mulroney as Everett Stone, Nelson as Kelly Stone, Parker as Meredith Morton, Wilson as Ben Stone, Tyrone Giordano as Thad Stone, Elizabeth Reaser as Susannah Stone, Paul Schneider as Brad Stevenson and Brian White as Patrick Thomas.
A Christmas reunion with a new complication
The official logline for The Families Stone places the family two decades beyond the original story: “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.”
That setup keeps the sequel firmly in the holiday-family-pressure-cooker territory of the first film, which centered on Everett Stone bringing his girlfriend, Meredith Morton, home for Christmas to meet his parents and siblings. In the original movie, Everett planned to propose, but Meredith struggled under the weight of the family’s frosty reception and called in her sister, Julie, for backup. The visit quickly became complicated, messy and emotionally charged.
In that first film, Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson played Everett’s parents, while Wilson, McAdams, Giordano and Reaser played his siblings. Keaton’s character, Sybil Stone, dies of a terminal illness at the end of the original movie.
The legacy of the original film
The Family Stone grossed $92.9 million worldwide. Though its reviews were mixed when it was released, the film has since become a cult favorite. Parker also received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a motion picture — comedy or musical for her performance.
The sequel emerged publicly after Bezucha revealed he was working on a follow-up a month after Keaton died in October 2025 at age 79. At the time, Bezucha told CNN that he had already been working on the script when he learned of her death.
Wilson later spoke with Entertainment Tonight in July about reading the script and about how the sequel would honor Keaton. “Tom Bezucha is a great writer and a great director, and I read the script, and it’s really funny, and it’s so nice that everybody wants to work together again,” he said. “After the death of Diane Keaton, it’ll be even more meaningful because she was so great to be around on the first one.”
Producers on The Families Stone include Michael London and Shannon Gaulding for Groundswell Productions, along with Parker and Alison Benson for Pretty Matches Productions.