More than a decade after Spring Breakers turned spring break into a surreal art-house fever dream, a sequel is officially happening. Titled Spring Breakers: Salvation Mountain, the follow-up won’t bring back the original cast—or its director—but it’s keeping the wild-road-trip-gone-wrong energy very much intact.
This time around, Bella Thorne leads a new crew of coeds: Ariel Martin (Zombies 2), Grace Van Dien (Stranger Things), and True Whitaker (Godfather of Harlem). The four play a group of rebellious girls who hit the road for spring break, only to find their trip spinning out of control. Think less bikinis and balaclavas, more Gen Z angst and outlaw chaos.
Harmony Korine, who wrote and directed the 2012 film, isn’t involved. Instead, Matthew Bright (Freeway) is stepping in as director after (presumably) living in the Chiapas jungle for 22 years (following the failure of his last film, Tiptoes1).
Producers Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner—who were behind the original—are returning. “We’re excited to keep exploring bold, new, disruptive stories around that wild, fever dream of youth,” they said in a statement, clearly not ready to let go of spring break anytime soon.
The film takes its name from Salvation Mountain, a kaleidoscopic desert monument that’s served as a spiritual pilgrimage site, Instagram backdrop, and now, a metaphor for youthful excess and searching.
The original Spring Breakers, starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, and Vanessa Hudgens, made over $30 million on a $5 million budget and cemented its status as a cult favorite. A different sequel—centered on Christian extremists and involving Irvine Welsh—was announced in 2014 but quietly shelved. That version never made it past the development stage.
Spring Breakers: Salvation Mountain is being sold internationally by Capture, a joint venture between Capstone Global (Don’t Move; Boy Kills World)and Signature Entertainment (Rust; Sympathy for the Devil), with financing from Capstone Studios.
Whether the new film can capture the unpredictable energy that made the original so distinct—or offer something fresh for a new generation—remains to be seen. But the party, apparently, isn’t over.
- Originally 150 minutes, Tiptoes was cut to 90 minutes by the producers; Bright was dragged off stage after lambasting them at Sundance. Today, the film is considered “one of the worst movies ever made“.[1]
Interestingly, Chris Hanley was a producer on Tiptoes and is producing Spring Breakers 2, while another Tiptoes producer, Fernando Sulichin, would later produce the original Spring Breakers— so it’s not known which producers were at fault for Tiptoes’ extreme edits, but it may have been Margaret Langley, who’s only iMDb credit is executive producing Tiptoes. ↩︎