Jennifer Grey is reassuring fans that the long-awaited Dirty Dancing sequel is "happening" — and will feature some familiar faces.
Months after helping announce details about the movie during Lionsgate's presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year, the actress, 62, filled Extra in on some new developments and said that filming for the project kicks off in the spring.
"I would say that you can count on it being at Kellerman's, returning to Kellerman's," Grey said of the setting from the 1987 original.
Then noting that her character of Frances "Baby" Houseman is also going to be "quite a few years older," Grey teased that a few "other characters from the original" will be joining her as well. "It's tricky, and also exciting," Grey told Extra.
The actress teased her return to Dirty Dancing during CinemaCon in April, 35 years after starring opposite the late Patrick Swayze in the original. Swayze played Johnny Castle, the character whom Baby met at the Catskills resort as a teen during the summer of 1963.
The capacity of Grey's role has been kept relatively under wraps since the announcement, and the actress told PEOPLE in November 2020 that the film won't attempt to recapture her chemistry with Swayze, who died in 2009 of pancreatic cancer at age 57.
"All I can say is there is no replacing anyone who's passed — you never try to repeat anything that's magic like that," she told PEOPLE at the time. "You just go for something different."
Grey — who released her memoir Out of the Corner in May — will also executive produce the sequel, and explained at the time that the original film's "appeal was that it was very genuine and simple."
The film is expected to be released in 2024, and Jonathan Levine was tapped to direct, per Variety.
In April 2022, Grey told PEOPLE that the follow-up film has been in the works "for a couple of years."
"And I know in my heart, I would love to give fans or a young, new audience an experience that would never replicate that, but has the same kind of underpinnings," she explained. "Today people think that their identity is limited, the world has told them what it is. But there are certain people who can see other parts of you."
"Dirty Dancing was a fairy tale, a successful movie and formula, using dance as a metaphor for embodying your energy and getting out of your head, and your limiting belief systems," Grey added.
The upcoming film marks Grey's first Dirty Dancing project since 1987, although the movie has spawned a TV series, a TV movie remake, a musical and the 2004 film Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.
