Dirty Dancing Sequel Won't Film Until It's Perfect, Says Jennifer Grey
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The sequel to the beloved 1987 movie Dirty Dancing won't put Baby in a corner. In fact, Jennifer Grey won't even be involved in the filming unless everything is "perfect" and appropriately honors the legacy and memory of her Dirty Dancing co-star, Patrick Swayze.
Grey elaborated on this point in an interview with Good Morning America on January 31: "...my whole job with this is to get it right, get it really right, in Patrick's honor, in honor of all of the fans' relationship with the movie. If you're going to do that movie again, it has to be right." Grey also added, "[The sequel is] something I refuse to do unless it's perfect, so I'm doing my very best to make sure we honor [Swayze's legacy]."
Indeed, Swayze's breakthrough performance was in Dirty Dancing. Swayze, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2009, played the bad-boy dance instructor Johnny, the man Grey's character, Frances "Baby" Houseman, falls in love with over the summer she and her family spent at Kellerman's resort. He went on to star in the movies Point Break, Ghost, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and Road House, among many others.
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The Dirty Dancing sequel is one movie that is part of the current interest in reviving and remaking Swayze's films: Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a remake of Road House, and Channing Tatum has expressed interest in remaking Ghost. While those movies won't be the same without Swayze, we're interested in seeing the fresh new takes on those stories and how the Dirty Dancing sequel will turn out.
The sequel, first announced by Lionsgate in April 2022 at Cinemacon, has had little else revealed about the project except for who will direct (Jonathan Levine), the release slate (slated for 2024), and certain other details—it will be set at Kellerman's and there will be other characters from the original Dirty Dancing. For fans of Dirty Dancing, it will be fun to see how they honor the original movie and to go back to the nostalgia of Kellerman's to see what has changed and what has stayed the same.
Stay tuned to Collider for any further details on the Dirty Dancing sequel. If you can't get enough of Jennifer Grey, you can catch her in her role as the controversial church leader Gwen Shamblin in Lifetime's Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation on February 4.
