A “Dirty Dancing” sequel with Jennifer Grey might sound like another shiny legacy sequel to a Hollywood classic, but producer Nina Jacobson is working to develop a follow-up that honors the grit and raw feeling of the 1987 original.
“I remember when I first saw it, it seemed like very glossy entertainment. Now it feels like kind of an indie. They take a lot of risks and they touch a lot of topics that people don’t touch in movies anymore,” Jacobson said during a panel at IndieWire‘s Future of Filmmaking 2026 Summit presented by AT&T. “If you tried to just slip by an abortion subplot in a romantic movie now, I think you’d get a lot of notes on that.”
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Jacobson took part in a conversation with IndieWire editor-in-chief Brent Lang at the event on Saturday in Los Angeles. Her film production company Color Force, where she is a producer and partner, is also behind FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” and Lionsgate’s upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel “Sunrise on the Reaping.” Earlier this year, Color Force also came aboard as producers for Lionsgate’s “Dirty Dancing” follow-up (though not “Dirty Dancing 2,” lest one forget “Havana Nights”), which will see Grey return as Frances “Baby” Houseman for a new ‘90s-set romance featuring another young cast.
“Grey has incredible insights into why she thinks [‘Dirty Dancing’] has lasted so much or what it is about her character that spoke so much to people and still does,” Jacobson said. “We were talking about this with adaptations: a movie can’t be just like the book, or a show can’t be just like the book that you are adapting. But it should make you feel the way the book did, and it should feel the way the book felt. [We are] trying to chase the feeling of that original movie. … Being able to tell a young love story that could take some of those risks but also inspire those feelings felt like an incredible chance for us.”
Along with Grey’s lead turn, “Dirty Dancing” is also defined by a co-lead turn by Patrick Swayze, as the concentrated dancer Johnny Castle that teaches Baby how to have the time of her life. Swayze died in 2009 of pancreatic cancer and Jacobson is intent on honoring the late star’s legacy with the sequel.
“That’s one of the things that you really have to focus on: how to let people mourn him in a movie,” Jacobson said. Then she added an assurance: “And don’t worry, we won’t be bringing him back with AI.”
Along with “Dirty Dancing,” Jacobson also shared details about the newly announced “Crazy Rich Asians” HBO series, which will draw from Kevin Kwan’s book series to further continue the story seen in the hit 2018 romantic comedy adaptation. While a second film was long speculated about, the producer explained why an ongoing TV series was the approach that was taken for the property’s return.
“We’ve struggled with trying to adapt it as a feature. It’s actually very hard to do a sequel to a romantic comedy because you resolve the central emotional conflict,” she said. “And, honestly, part of it was that none of the folks from the feature side who were there when we made the original were still there. … They didn’t necessarily have that appetite, whereas there was an enormous appetite over at HBO for the books. There’s so much in the books that you have to subtract because the books have this great big cast of characters and all these crazy melodramatic twists and turns. It’s very well-suited to television.”
“It was unimaginable if we tried to do this right after the movie came out: the idea that you could get all of these people who all blew up afterwards to do a TV show together,” Jacobson continued. “But now everybody misses everybody else. Television really is one of the best ways for us to do a reunion because it’s very hard to address all the things people liked about the movie in a sequel.”
Along with the conversation with Jacobson, IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit also included a keynote by directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, diving into the production of their sci-fi blockbuster “Project Hail Mary,” and a one-on-one with Bill Hader on what he learned making his upcoming feature debut “They Know.”
IndieWire Future of Filmmaking 2026 Summit is presented by AT&T Untold Stories, an impactful multi-year collaboration between AT&T and Tribeca Festival that awards $1.2 million dollars, mentorship, and comprehensive support to the next generation of filmmakers looking to bring their films to the big screen. For more information, visit here.