John Carver will kill again as Thanksgiving sequel confirmed

Eli Roth has confirmed that a sequel to Thanksgiving will be produced.

The 2023 slasher movie received positive reviews from critics and has been a moderate financial success so far, earning over $31 million against a budget of $15m.

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The official premise reads:

"After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious serial killer, known only as John Carver, comes to Plymouth, Massachusetts, with the intention of creating a Thanksgiving carving board out of the town's inhabitants."

It stars Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon.

The movie is actually based on a fake trailer that Roth made for 2007's Grindhouse. It proved so popular that he eventually decided to develop a real movie based upon it.

After the reception Thanksgiving received, a sequel has been greenlit,

"BREAKING NEWS! John Carver will kill again! @thanksgivingmovie sequel is a GO!!! Thank you everyone who supported ORIGINAL HORROR in theaters!!!" Roth wrote on Instagram.

"Go see it now on the big screen while it’s in cinemas, sequel set for release in 2025! Taking a year to really get the script right, working on it starting today!

Roth wants Thanksgiving to be as influential as Scream

Scream is credited with revitalising the slasher movie genre and has gone on to become one of the most beloved and lucrative horror franchises in history, and Roth hopes Thanksgiving can inspire a new generation of horror fans.

"We had such high standards and high expectations for the movie," Roth told SFX Magazine.

"We wanted to make a great modern slasher film. I remember the first time I saw Scream in the theatre and you just go, ‘Holy shit. That was amazing!’ That’s what I want, to do that for the next generation."

Roth also explained why it was necessary to trump what people saw in the original fake trailer.

"Every time you do one of those kills that you shot before, it has to be as good or better, because otherwise, what’s the point?" he continued.

"I don’t want people to watch and go, 'It’s better in the trailer.' So if you couldn’t top what we did in the trailer, you had to do something different. Part of the fun was it freed us up to come up with all-new kills."