More than 25 years after Julia Roberts danced awkwardly at a Chicago lobster restaurant and tried to sabotage her best friend’s wedding, a sequel to the beloved romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding is officially in the works – this time with Past Lives writer-director Celine Song.
My Best Friend’s Wedding follows Julianne (Julia Roberts), who, upon learning her close friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) is getting married, realises she’s in love with him and tries to sabotage his wedding. She’s appointed maid of honor, and her efforts to break them up become increasingly complicated, but ultimately she realises Michael isn’t meant to be with her.
According to Collider and The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures is developing the sequel project, though details remain under wraps. While Song is confirmed to be writing the screenplay, she is not currently attached to direct, and the film is not expected to be her immediate follow-up to Materialists.
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Watch the trailer for My Best Friend’s Wedding:
My Best Friend’s Wedding and Celine Song: a curious match
On paper, Song might seem like an unusual choice to revisit one of the rom-com genre’s most loved titles. Her breakout feature, Past Lives, earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and was widely praised for its melancholic depth and restraint, which does sound worlds away from the broad screwball energy of the 1997 My Best Friend’s Wedding.
‘[Past Lives] asks what would you do if someone from your past, especially your first love, reappeared later in your life’ wrote Hyunseon Lee in this piece from The Conversation on Song’s debut feature. ‘Would your perception of this person change? Would they still be a lover or could you be friends? What impact would it have on your current relationship? Would you always be wondering what life could have been like?’
Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, was Song’s 2025 follow up to Past Lives, and her first take on the modern rom-com. We really rated it: ‘Aesthetically gorgeous, endlessly romantic and stealthily funny, Materialists is a romcom that melds together classic tropes of the genre with modern sensibilities’ (read the full review).
‘As seen in Past Lives, Song has a knack for capturing the multitudes of emotion that take place in the silent moments between characters. As a clear deft hand at directing actors in romantic narratives, she pulls the best out of Johnson, Pascal and Evans – with the latter delivering one of his best performances in years.’
ScreenHub: Materialists review: Celine Song secures her bag as a romance movie auteur
The thoughtful flicks Materialists and Past Lives already have a lot in common with My Best Friend’s Wedding: a stylish romance film that’s primarily about longing disguised as sabotage. A sequel that revisits Julianne (Roberts) and Michael (Mulroney) decades later, possibly with a little more maturity and regret, could be fertile ground for a writer like Song.
Will the film lean into nostalgia, or try to redefine the genre yet again for a more emotionally literate audience? And what of Rupert Everett’s performance as Julianne’s flamboyant confidante – will he return to offer another iconic singalong? We can only speculate (and hope).
Romance redux
Directed by P.J. Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding), the original film was a global smash, earning over $250 million AUD in today’s dollars and leaving an indelible mark on the genre. Its subversive finale (where, spoiler alert, the girl doesn’t get the guy) was considered daring for its time and remains a rare rom-com anomaly.
Despite that bittersweet ending, Hollywood appears increasingly willing to resurrect its past hits. After all, nostalgia sells, and it makes sense that they have faith in Song to elevate the dreaded ‘legacy sequel’ into something more emotionally resonant.
For now, fans of the original can only hope that the sequel won’t just be another hollow toast to past glories, but something truly worth clinking glasses over.
