Mamma Mia 3 seems like an inevitability

Here we go again, again: Mamma Mia 3 is all but green-lit, according to producer Judy Craymer. Craymer is the mastermind behind putting the jukebox musical on Broadway in the first place, and the whole concept has famously been a huge success since. It only makes sense that the powers that be would want to make more Mamma Mia, even if there can’t possibly be many more workable ABBA songs from which to form a soundtrack.

“I’m sure [the third movie] will happen,” Craymer tells Variety in a new interview. “I’m in the privileged position that I have Universal Studios wanting to do it, who I love working with, and I have a storyline.”

What that storyline might be is a mystery for now, though in a Vogue oral history of the film Craymer noted that “We went back and forth in time with the second one, so now we have the creative license to explore this world further.” That could be Lily James’ young Donna raising her daughter, or Meryl Streep’s older Donna building a life with Sam (Pierce Brosnan) following the events of the first movie, or anything in between. “I think we have to bring a certain closure to these characters,” Craymer said at the time. “All of their odysseys lead them back to the island, because that’s where they all want to be in their older years.”

“It just always takes a certain amount of time with Mamma Mia,” Craymer tells Variety now. “Bjorn [Ulvæus] and Benny [Andersson] always take a certain amount of convincing. I don’t know how much more convincing they’re gonna have because everybody wants another film. But they had ABBA Voyage and then they wanted a rest from ABBA staff. But it will happen. We’ve done the television show [reality competition Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream] and now maybe I’ll focus on the movie. Maybe that’ll be a second 25-year celebration.”

Most of the actors have expressed a desire to return for another musical adventure (even Meryl Streep, who was killed off in the sequel). But there is one major potential roadblock: “Nobody is saying no, but nobody is saying yes either. The powers that be probably can’t afford us to be honest,” star Amanda Seyfried put it bluntly in the Vogue oral history. “I hate to say it, because would I do Mamma Mia 3 for free—of course I would—but that’s not the business we’re in. What’s fair is fair, and I feel like a third film is gonna come down to something stupid like whether or not Universal wants to pay the money.” Hear that, Universal? Pay your actors what they’re worth!