Baby, Please!! ‘A Simple Favor 2’ Confirmed to Start Filming With Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick Returning

All the way back in the hallowed halls of May 2022, we reported that an A Simple Favor sequel was in the works, at the time calling the original a “cinematic masterpiece” (we were correct, and I stand by it). Well today I have excellent news for anyone reading this who still gets a shiver when Blake Lively calls you “baby” — A Simple Favor 2 is OFFICIALLY HAPPENING!

Deadline announced today that Amazon MGM Studios has given the film a green light. But wait, much like me on my knees begging for Blake Lively to be mean to me, grab me by the neck, and make me a martini, we’re not done! The sequel will also come with Paul Fieg back in the director’s chair, Jessica Sharzar back on the pen, plus Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and the original cast all reunited!!

According to Deadline, the A Simple Favor sequel will see “the return of Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Lively) as they head to the beautiful island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman.” There wiill be some light murdering, of course, and “more twists and turns than the road from the Marina Grande to the Capri town square” — which all sounds very *chef’s kiss erotique if you ask me.

In addition to Kendrick and Lively, you can expect Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Joshua Satine, Ian Ho, Henry Golding (one of the few straight romance leads I care about) in A Simple Favor 2, along with… wait for it… Kelly McCormack, who in the time between the original film and now has become beloved by queer audiences as A League of Their Own’s resident butch, Jess McCready.

Lionsgate is co-producing the sequel with Amazon MGM Studios and cameras are set to start rolling this very spring! There’s a streaming release on Prime Video in 240 countries already planned. Sharzer will continue to build off characters originally created by Darcy Bell in A Simple Favor’s original novel.

I don’t what to tell you! This is a big day for me, personally. I’m so grateful to live in a world in which I get to experience this triumph of cinema twice, and the second time in Italy. It’s giving Killing Eve meets Under the Tuscan Sun. It’s giving Katharine Hepburn in an old Hollywood film that I only learned about this year, 1955’s Summertime. It’s giving Halle Berry tits out and naked on her balcony (this is also the wallpaper on my cell phone). It’s giving rich bitch in a silk bathrobe and a bottle of pinot. Are you not entertained?!?!

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

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