Dirty Dancing Star Confirms Characters Returning for New Sequel

Decades after the release of Dirty Dancing, a much-anticipated sequel is set to arrive in theaters in 2024 with the sequel seeing Jennifer Grey reprising her iconic role of Baby. However, Grey’s Baby won’t be the only returning Dirty Dancing character fans will get to see in the sequel. Grey told Extra (via PEOPLE) that not only is filming on the project set to kick off in the spring, but there will be some familiar faces in the. new film.

“I would say that you can count on it being at Kellerman’s, returning to Kellerman’s,” Grey said, referring to the setting of the original 1987 film. She went on to note that Baby will be “quite a few years older” than the last time we saw her and that a few “other characters from the original” will be joining the story as well.

As for what fans can expect from the sequel, Grey previously told the Los Angeles Time that the film will tell a fresh story, which will be set in the 1990s.

“I’m excited by the challenge of looking at it from the point of view of what happens when it’s 30 years later and it’s the ’90s,” Grey said. “What happens with the person that had that experience — what happened to her and what is now relevant about the original story at a different moment, looking at it through a different lens. I think it’s, hopefully, really going to satisfy without ever feeling like it’s — look, I have no desire to remake the first one or to compete with the first one or to make it better than the first one or as good. It’s more about: What’s a fresh story to be told?”

How will the Dirty Dancing sequel deal with Patrick Swayze’s legacy?

There aren’t yet a ton of details about the Dirty Dancing sequel, though director Jonathan Levine has previously said that the film won’t ignore the legacy of the late Patrick Swayze, who portrayed Johnny in the original film.  Swayze died in 2009. Levine previously said that “Johnny’s absence looms large over the story” and likened the sequel’s story as a “coming-of-age for Baby’s character in a way” and that’s something Grey acknowledged as well, calling the sequel “a new creature”.

“There is no going back, there is no having that again,” she said. “That was its own creature. There’s a new creature, and what is that new creature? And what is the way in which — we still need to have the next iteration of ourselves be born, and who is going to help bear that out? What is the need? Where’s the place where you need to be catapulted into a different dimension?”

The yet-untitled Dirty Dancing sequel is set to open in theaters in 2024.