Spring Breakers 2 is officially in development, with Bella Thorne taking the reins as writer, director, and star, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed. Original producers Chris and Roberta Hanley have returned to helm the sequel.
“The original Spring Breakers was an iconic cultural touchstone, and taking the reins as a filmmaker is a dream project for me,” Thorne said in a statement. “I’m so grateful to Chris and Roberta Hanley for trusting me with their world. I’ve always been drawn to stories that explore the unapologetic, unfiltered side of youth culture, and I can’t wait to deliver a wild, high-stakes thrill ride that honors the first film while forging its own distinct path.”
Echoing the original, Thorne’s sequel will center on “five girls entering the wildest party of their lives on spring break, only to realize they were never guests — just targets,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
Spring Breakers casting director Mary Vernieu, who more recently worked on Knives Out, and her Euphoria collaborator Jessica Kelly will hold an international casting call for Thorne’s co-stars.
“After seeing an early cut of Bella’s feature debut, Color Your Hurt, Roberta and I instantly recognized a fearless, disruptive directorial talent and a new creative voice,” added Chris Hanley in a statement. “Her visual style and vision to weave real-life non-actors with seasoned performers gave her version of the story an unvarnished authenticity that completely blew us away. We invited her to bring that same raw energy to her own Spring Breakers project, and her screenplay offers a brand-new, female POV. This isn’t a traditional sequel. It’s Bella’s singular vision, capturing the rebellious DNA of the original film for a new generation.”
The announcement comes after Thorne teased on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast that she had been asked to star, write, and direct Spring Breakers 2. “That was such a cultural moment in time, and everyone just becoming a woman and questioning being a woman and what that’s gonna look like for the rest of your life,” she said of the original.
Directed by Harmony Korine, Spring Breakers was released in 2013 and starred Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine as four college friends drawn into the orbit of local drug dealer Alien (James Franco). Rapper Gucci Mane also starred in the A24 film as Alien’s menacing rival.
A sequel, titled Spring Breakers: The Second Coming, was announced in 2014 without Korine and Franco’s involvement. The actor did not take kindly to the idea, saying, “The original was wholly Harmony’s creation and these producers are capitalizing on that innovative film to make money on a weak sequel.”
Hanley responded by calling Franco “a sequel junkie in his own reality, embracing the too big to fail studio system that is his meal ticket to dilettante artistic side shows, while he glibly attacks real independent filmmakers dedicated to independent points of view,” adding that the next Spring Breakers will “make the first one look like some Disney girls trying to get a new lease on life.”
That project didn’t come to fruition, and neither did a digital series announced in 2017. More recently, a new sequel, Spring Breakers: Salvation Mountain, was announced in May 2025 with Thorne leading the cast and Matthew Bright (Freeway) as director.
Now, Thorne’s creative vision is for a “lit as fuck” sequel from “start to finish,” as she told Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper. In the meantime, you can pick up the original Spring Breakers on Blu-ray at Amazon.