Universal will ‘find a way’ to bring Meryl Streep back for ‘Mamma Mia 3’

I have a dream, a song to sing, to help me cope, with the faint chance of Meryl Streep not starring in another Mamma Mia film.

It’s been eight years since the release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the last installment in the ABBA-inspired musical franchise. The ensuing years have only amped up fans clamoring for more Greek island-hopping, more paternity sleuthing, and most of all, more Meryl.

While Universal, the studio behind the Broadway adaptation and its sequel, have yet to announce an official greenlight on Mamma Mia 3, Sunday brought the most hopeful sign yet that more is likely to come. Universal Pictures Chairwoman Donna Langley was able “to say right now that there will be a Mamma Mia 3,” she told Deadline Hollywood on the red carpet at the 2026 BAFTAs.

Langley said she’s currently in “conversations with Judy Craymer, the wonderful Dame Judy Craymer,” the producer behind the original stage show who first brought the project to Universal for development.

She would not specify when the new film is likely to shoot, but did say that if franchise star “Meryl Streep would like to come back, we will find a way to bring her back.”

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Since Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again grossed over four times its budget upon its 2018 release, Mamma Mia fans around the world have wondered why a third installment wasn’t immediately put into production. That includes the films’ cast, who have shared near-unanimous enthusiasm at the prospect of returning for a Mamma Mia 3.

Craymer believes “one day there will be another film, because there’s meant to be a trilogy, you see. I know Universal would like me to do it,” she revealed in 2020.

Pierce Brosnan, who appeared in both films as the dashing architect Sam Carmichael, one of Donna’s (Streep) old flames and Sophie’s (Seyfried) potential fathers, said two years later that not only would he return for a Mamma Mia 3, he thinks “everybody would be in.”

Seyfried has expressed again and again her willingness to reprise her role as Sophie, even assenting to fans’ suggestion that ascendant pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter be cast as her daughter.

Finally, Streep herself has also given the thumbs up, even though Donna died off screen between Mamma Mia and Here We Go Again, though she does return as a ghost in the latter film. “I’m up for anything,” Streep said in 2023, joking, “I’ll have to schedule a knee scoping before we film, but if there’s an idea that excites me, I’m totally there.”