Thanksgiving 2 : Eli's second helpings

Next year, “Thanksgiving 2” promises another helping from the renewed Roth and Rendell. The filmmaker said the sequel is in “soft prep” now with plans to start shooting at the end of March. It won’t be a prequel, several actors are returning, and the script is already written. Now they’re hammering out the budget which Roth wants to keep low like last time.

“We’re upping the ante but we are not going to do it with more money,” he said. “That keeps it tight and lean and mean and forces us to make decisions. There’s a lot of setting up that we did in the first one that we don’t have to deal with now. It can just be all pay-off.”

Roth aims to deliver an epic, “no bull****,” cat-and-mouse chase akin to Anthony Waller’s “Mute Witness” (1995) and the Kathleen/Carver/pitchfork sequence from the first “Thanksgiving.” He continued, “I’ve come up with stuff that is going to be a challenge. And I want it to be a challenge to pull off. Because if I’ve come up with the stuff that I think will make the best kills, then I’m going to do it like I’m never going to make another movie again.”

Fans will decide if “Thanksgiving 2” should be a final course or the first of many in 2025. For now, Roth is geeking out over the score coming to vinyl and devoting himself fully to the thirsty blade of John Carver.