Jean Smart Joins Searchlight Pictures’ ‘The Families Stone’

Fresh off a historic fifth Emmy win for Hacks, Jean Smart has inked a deal to join The Families Stone, Searchlight’s sequel to the perennial holiday favorite The Family Stone.

Character details are being kept under wraps. Searchlight just announced the project, which shoots in New York this fall.

As you’ll recall, 2005’s The Family Stone found Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) bringing his tightly wound girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) home to meet his liberal, bohemian New England family over the holidays. A disastrous visit led to romantic complications, shifting loyalties and the revelation of a terminal diagnosis on the part of beloved matriarch Sybil Stone (Diane Keaton).

The sequel picks up 20 years after Sybil’s passing, as the Stone family again reunites for Christmas, only to face the season’s biggest surprise: their father (Craig T. Nelson) has unexpectedly invited the woman he’s fallen in love with to meet the family.

Returning cast for the sequel includes Mulroney, Parker and Nelson, as well as Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Tyrone Giordano, Elizabeth Reaser, Paul Schneider and Brian White. The making of a sequel is timely and poignant, given Keaton’s real-life passing last October, aged 79.

Tom Bezucha has returned to direct from his own script, with original producer Michael London back to produce alongside Shannon Gaulding for Groundswell Productions, along with Parker and Alison Benson for Pretty Matches Productions. SVP of Production Taylor Friedman and Creative Executive Daniel Yu are overseeing for Searchlight, reporting to Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.

At the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 14, Smart became the first female performer to win an acting Emmy for every single season of a TV series. With her eighth career win that night — recognizing her performance as Las Vegas stand-up Deborah Vance on HBO Max’s Hacks — she tied Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the all-time record of acting wins by a performer.

We recently reported on Smart’s first project following up Hacks: a romantic comedy titled Egg Baby that Natalia Anderson is directing for Amazon MGM Studios. Co-starring there opposite Ariana Greenblatt, she is repped by WME and Untitled Entertainment.