Thanksgiving Director Eli Roth Breaks Silence on Highly Anticipated Sequel

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving was a modest success, earning $46 million at the box office (and plenty of eventual streaming views) on a budget of just $15 million. That makes Thanksgiving one of the more successful spinoffs of the original Grindhouse film, which first premiered the concept as one of the faux trailers included between the double-feature event. That was enough of an accomplishment for a Thanksgiving sequel to be greenlit — after all, the holiday still has plenty of room to make this horror-slasher an annual event (and cash cow).

In a new interview, Eli Roth addressed plans for Thanksgiving 2, informing fans that the sequel is currently in “soft prep” to get ready for a March 2025 production start.

“We’re upping the ante but we are not going to do it with more money,” Roth explained to IndieWire. “That keeps it tight and lean and mean and forces us to make decisions. There’s a lot of setting up that we did in the first one that we don’t have to deal with now. It can just be all pay-off.”

The director has been teasing Thanksgiving 2 ever since the first film went into production. As he previously indicated to ComicBook, ideas for the sequel started coming together during production — even though there were no official plans for it.

“Well, we didn’t really think too much beyond this movie, but as we were shooting, you start joking around going, ‘Oh yeah, we could do a movie set there, we could do this, we could do that. The Thanksgivingverse’” Roth explained. “I mean… we had such a great time making it and the more you think about it, the more ideas you get… We were like, ‘We don’t want to stop!’ …. We thought, ‘Okay, how can we get back to this?’”

In this latest interview, Roth indicated that he wants a major chase sequence to be part of Thanksgiving 2, as well as continuing the creative kills that we saw in the first film.

“I’ve come up with stuff that is going to be a challenge. And I want it to be a challenge to pull off,” Roth said. “Because if I’ve come up with the stuff that I think will make the best kills, then I’m going to do it like I’m never going to make another movie again.”

As for Thanksgiving’s franchise potential, Roth already sees the IP becoming an annual cinematic event.

“I feel like we have a new tradition. And that’s all you want to do is leave your mark — good or bad — on pop culture. Eventually, no one is going to remember. The only thing that will be left is the movies.”

Roth previously teased at least one returning character from the first Thanksgiving movie: social media star Addison Rae, who played Gaby. “I love Addison Rae,” Roth previously said. “We kept her alive for a reason. It doesn’t feel like a Thanksgiving movie without Addison Rae.”

Thanksgiving is currently streaming on Netflix.