'Girls Trip 2' Is 'Officially Happening'

Girls Trip, the 2017 hit comedy, is getting a sequel. Writer Tracy Oliver said the sequel is "officially" happening and will feature the original cast. Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Tiffany Haddish starred as a group of friends who go to New Orleans to reconnect at the Essence Music Festival.

While at the Sundance Film Festival to promote the new Amazon Prime Video series Harlem, Oliver told Variety she had a "definitive" update to share on Girls Trip 2. "That it's officially happening. I can say that," she said. She joked that producer Will Packer "might kill me" when she revealed that the sequel would take the characters to Ghana.

After Oliver shared the update, Harlem star Shoniqua Shandai yelled, "Afrochella!" This was in reference to the annual Afrochella cultural and music festival held in Ghana. The stars of Girls Trip will take a trip to the festival in the sequel. There is no timetable though, as she still needs to finish her script.

Girls Trip was a big box office hit for Universal Pictures in 2017. It grossed $140.9 million worldwide, and only cost $19 million to make. Oliver wrote the script with Kenya Barris and Erica Rivinoja, and Malcolm D. Lee directed. It served as Haddish's breakout project.

Hall, who played author Ryan Pierce in the first movie, previously said on The View that Girls Trip 2 production was put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic. "I hate disappointing. We're not in production. We're not ready yet," Hall said. She went on to note that everyone's schedule has made it difficult.

"I just can't wait to see the script. It is going to happen, it's what I've been told, I did hear that they're writing," Hall said on The View. "Everything gets slowed down with schedules. It was going to move, and then Omicron happened." Hall later said it will be "really, really nice" to work with everyone again.

Lee, who recently worked with Hall again on The Best Man: The Final Chapters, told Entertainment Weekly in 2018 that he wanted to do a sequel after the success of Girls Trip. "It has to be a little bit bigger, it has to be just as good, just as funny, just as outrageous and that takes time," he said. "We don't want to do it if it's not going to be great. We want to make sure that it's a quality piece of work."

During a December 2021 interview with PopCulture.com, Oliver sighed, noting how difficult it is to get everyone's schedules lined up. "The last time that I talked to Tiffany Haddish, she was like, 'Girl, we doing this," Oliver explained. "And I was like, 'Yay, it's happening.' And then she's booked like a million things. And I don't know if it's ever going to all align, but it has to be cast availability and the budget has to work out. And if I can be really candid, it's the budget for why this has been really tricky."