My Big Fat Greek Wedding is back with a brand-new adventure! The worldwide phenomenon that first premiered in 2002 and became the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time is returning to theaters. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is written and directed by Academy Award nominee Nia Vardalos and produced by Rita Wilson p.g.a, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman. The returning ensemble cast includes Vardalos as Toula, John Corbett as Toula’s husband, Ian, Elena Kampouris as their daughter, Paris, Louis Mandylor as Toula’s brother, Nick, Lainie Kazan as Maria, Toula and Nick’s mother, Andrea Martin as Maria’s sister, Aunt Voula, Maria Vacratsis as Aunt Frieda, and Gia Carides and Joey Fatone as cousins Nikki and Angelo. The film also introduces Elias Kacavas as Paris’ ex, Aristotle, Melina Kotselou as Victory, and Stephanie Nur as Qamar.
The original My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a massive hit at the box office and became an instant classic. The story centers around Toula, a young Greek woman falling in love with a non-Greek man, Ian, and struggling with her family’s expectations. Vardalos was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Actress. The ensemble cast was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics Choice Award, and the film won the People’s Choice Award, while Vardalos won the Independent Spirit Award.
In 2016, the sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, reunited the original cast as Vardalos imagined what the Portokalos family might be like with Toula and Ian struggling to parent a teen and realizing they had morphed into their own parents. And now, the highly anticipated third film in the globally beloved My Big Fat Greek Wedding franchise reunites the immensely relatable Portokalos family as they embark on an adventure to their ancestral home of Greece to honor the past, present, and future, and rediscover their roots.
For Vardalos, the adventure she has been on with these three films over two decades recently invited some reflection. “As I recorded my last voiceover, I got quite emotional because I had never realized this would be my career and that I would be able to connect with absolute strangers on the topic of family,” she shares. “It’s so wonderful that people see their own experiences reflected in mine. It makes me feel very connected to being a family and how everyone is experiencing our same issues.”
The film begins after the Portokalos family has been sent an invitation to participate in a reunion for all the families who have moved away from the village their father came from. It was sent to them by Victory (Melina Kotselou), the extremely passionate town mayor. Before he passed away, Toula’s father, Gus, asked her to go to the reunion and meet his old friends to pass on a journal he had kept of his life story. To honor his memory, the Portokalos family wants to see where their dad grew up.
In making a third film, not only did the original cast eagerly sign up, but the powerhouse producing team of Rita Wilson p.g.a, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman also returned – something Vardalos says she feels incredibly grateful for. “The producers always believed in me in a way that I had to catch up to because from the beginning – before I even believed I was a filmmaker – they were telling me I was. So I’ve had to slowly, but surely, have the confidence in myself that they had in me.”
Gia Carides, who plays Toula’s cousin Nikki, says she feels like this is the perfect time for audiences to reunite with this family. “I meet so many people that say they watch it every year at the holidays,” she notes. “People have their favorite lines, their favorite characters, and it’s a lot of people’s favorite film, so I think it’s time for people to have some fun again!”
The film is set to be another heartwarming and hilarious trip full of love, twists, and turns. As the Portokalos family journeys to Greece for a family reunion, audiences can expect to be entertained and charmed by the beloved characters they have come to know and love. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 hits theaters on September 8th, 2023!
