'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Creator Officially Confirms More Stories Are Coming [Exclusive]

Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of one of romantic comedy's biggest overnight success stories in recent memory — My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Penned by and starring Nia Vardalos and John Corbett, and directed by Joel Zwick, the film was a prime example of word-of-mouth success, going from a relatively unknown indie feature to a $368.7 million blockbuster that has become a cultural staple in the genre with an Oscar nomination. Vardalos has since spun the very personal story of cultural identity and family into a franchise that spans three successful movies and one short-lived stint on television. Yet, the Millers and Portokaloses haven't had their last laugh yet.

Toula (Vardalos) and Ian (Corbett) last shared the screen back in 2023 with the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, which was set up as an emotional final chapter for the comedy series. The film wasn't just a reunion for the main stars, but for the fictional family as well, taking them back to Greece on a mission to honor their late patriarch, Gus. It was a fitting thematic ending that gave the Portokalos clan much-needed closure while also serving as a tribute to Michael Constantine, who passed away in 2021. While it would be understandable to leave things there, Vardalos believes there are always stories to tell with this tight-knit unit.

During a panel at FanX Salt Lake City over the weekend, moderated by Collider's Maggie Lovitt, the writer and star was asked if she had more she'd ever want to explore either with a fourth film or a new series. In her eyes, it was a no-brainer. "I do," Vardalos said. "I just feel like I can't not hang out with this family." While she feels confident there will always be an audience for the MBFGW films, the power that keeps these movies going strong is the cast and their tight-knit bond. As long as someone cares, they'll be willing to explore the realities of culture and life together, be they comedic, romantic, or tragic.

"I know that we have... there's such an audience out there that wants to know what happens to this family, and we do too, and we love to hang out together, and it's just such a gift, and I thank you so much for going to the movies because they're friendly, and they're a family who goes through real stuff and they work things out together. And I believe that the reason that they resonate is because we, the cast, are a family."

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic

Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.

🍂Harry & Sally(1989)

🏀Love & Basketball(2000)

🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)

🚢Titanic(1997)

FIND YOUR ROMANCE →

01

How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.

AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.

AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.

AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.

ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.

ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.

AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.

AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.

AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.

REVEAL MY ROMANCE →

Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.

Harry & Sally

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

Love & Basketball

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

Heated Rivalry

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding.

Titanic

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way.

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The 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Cast Remains Close Off the Set

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was the first not to include Constantine, Bruce Gray, Bess Meisler, and Ian Gomez, but it still featured many of the faces that have made the franchise possible. Regulars Lainie Kazan, Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides, Joey Fantone, and more have been around for all three films in addition to Vardalos and Corbett, making memories and becoming a family in their own right along the way. That authentic connection goes far beyond the set and into actual reunions over lunch or something else entirely. "We are going to see each other next week," Vardalos added. "God bless Lainie Kazan now, who plays our mom. She's in a wheelchair, and we're gonna go get her and wheel her to lunch. Yes, you know, that's just the way it is. We're all really, really close." Assuming she has an idea, it's likely many of the fictional Portokaloses would be first in line to help make it happen.

Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the future of My Big Fat Greek Wedding as updates come out.