The Portokalos family is returning to Greece to reconnect with their roots.
The trailer, released today by Focus Features, reveals quite a bit has happened since Toula’s (Nia Vardalos) wedding to Ian (John Corbett) in the first film.
“My father passed away, and his last wish was for us to visit his childhood village and reconnect with our roots, so we’re having a reunion,” Toula says. “And by we, I mean the whole family.”
Not surprisingly, chaos ensues with Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) treating everyone on the plane to souvlaki, “Who wants souvlaki,?” to which the flight attendant replies “Paging Sue Vlaki, anybody by the name of Sue Vlaki on this flight?” You get the picture. Paris (Elena Kampouris) also expectedly runs into Aristotle, a man she apparently ghosted.
The third installment is the first without family patriarch Costas, played by the late Michael Constantine.
Part 3 was written and directed by the franchise’s creator Vardalos and stars the Oscar-nominated screenwriter opposite Corbett, Louis Mandylor, Kampouris, Maria Vacratsis, Martin, Elias Kacavas, Gia Carides, Joey Fatone and Melina Kotselou.
“The sweet friendship which bloomed from the producers’ first taking a chance on me then grew into a beautiful relationship as they entrusted me to direct this installment of our franchise,” Vardalos said previously. “We filmed our family reunion entirely in Greece, which was thrilling for us all. Plus, we ate for free.
The first My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a box office anomaly and case study back in 2002. The IFC Films pic ran as a platform release in fewer than 1,000 theaters for 17 weekends, initially $45M during that time before going north of that threshold to 2,000-plus locations and grossing a wild $241.4M domestic and $368.2M worldwide off a $5M production cost. The sequel, released by Universal, arrived in 2016 and made $59.6M domestic and $90.6M worldwide, putting the romantic comedy series at $458.8M.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is set for global release on September 8. Check out the trailer above.
