After wrapping on her directorial debut last year, Bella Thorne revealed that Spring Breakers 2 will be her sophomore feature in the director’s chair.

Following the announcement that she’ll star in the sequel to Harmony Korine’s 2012 cult crime drama, the actress said that producers asked her to write and direct the film as well, having seen an early cut of her debut Color Your Hurt.

“The producers watched Color Your Hurt, which is the movie that I just wrapped, an early cut of it. And they asked me to write something to see if they would like it,” she recalled on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “And they loved it. And now I’m writing and directing Spring Breakers 2. Spring Break forever, bitch, let’s go!”

Thorne added, “We’re working with the original team—is back. So, we’re really excited about that. Um, I don’t want to get in trouble. But what I can say is, it is so litty, litty McTitties. I mean, from start to finish, it’s lit as fuck.”

When asked if anyone from the original movie’s cast—which included James Franco, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Rachel Korine—would return for the sequel, Thorne took a sip of her drink.

“We are having fun. If you wanted to go to the theater and have fun, you’re going to have fun with this movie. That’s for sure. Yeah, it’s balls to the wall. That’s what everyone says when they read the script, balls to the wall,” said Thorne.

Before Thorne wrapped Color Your Hurt in October 2025, she was cast that May in Spring Breakers: Salvation Mountain, which was to be helmed by Matthew Bright. Thorne was cast alongside Ariel Martin, Grace Van Dien and True Whitaker as a group of rebellious girls who go on a chaotic spring break road trip, according to Variety.

There is still a long wait to be had for the highly anticipated second season of Heated Rivalry.

When Season 1 of the Crave book adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series skated quietly ontoHBO Max Nov. 28, 2025, it quickly built momentum and became a phenomenon.

Season 2 is in the works while stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie ride the waves of their meteoric rises to fame and book other projects.

For everything we know about Heated Rivalry Season 2, read on:

When will Heated Rivalry Season 2 come out?

The goal is for Season 2 to air in the spring of 2027, likely April.

Has Heated Rivalry Season 2 started production?

Not yet, but creator Jacob Tierney told Gayle King on CBS that shooting will begin in August once he’s finished writing the second season.

What can we expect for the plot of Heated Rivalry Season 2? Will it be based off another one of Rachel Reid’s books?

Season 2 of Heated Rivalry will adapt The Long Game, the sixth book in the series by Rachel Reid and direct sequel to Shane and Ilya’s first book. Jacob Tierney teased to Deadline in a recent interview that he may split that book’s story into two parts, citing “a lot of material” to work with.

The Long Game picks back up with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov after they have been seeing each other for 10 years, keeping their relationship a secret. Ilya wants to go public, but Shane feels that they should keep it under wraps to stay at the top of his game.

RELATED: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Cast Speaks Out About Online Hate: “Don’t Call Yourself A Fan If You Share … Bigoted Comments Of Any Kind”

As for Kip (Robbie G.K.) and Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), G.K. told People that he would love to see that relationship explored more in Season 2.

“We catch Scott and Kip on the very top of the rollercoaster of our storyline, and I think that there’s a whole lot that could be explored after the fact,” G.K. told the publication. “So I’d like to see some of that.”

Tierney has also teased that The Long Game is “an emotionally sophisticated book that takes this couple seriously,” thus there are higher stakes for Shane and Ilya.

“It really is different, and the challenge, from an adaptation standpoint, is you’re in much more serious territory,” he explained at BookCon 2026, according to Entertainment Weekly. “There’s still lots of flirting, and there’s lots of sex, but it’s this kind of danger. This kind of ‘hotel room, adolescent sex’ stuff is largely gone.”

RELATED: London Book Fair Analysis: Industry Hopes ‘Heated Rivalry’ Effect Will Overcome “Divergence” Between TV, Film & Publishing

Tierney said that when he first spoke with author Reid about adapting the books focused on Shane and Ilya, he stressed that he wanted to take their relationship seriously and not make it “pulpy and soapy.”

“Part of what transfixed me [about their relationship] was knowing where it was going with The Long Game. Rachel took them very seriously, and these little tidbits in the first book become real issues for them [later],” he said.

“What do you do after the rush of danger is gone and yet now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren’t communicating properly, much as you would like to?” added Tierney. “You can say you love each other, but as adults know, there’s so much more than that to make a relationship successful. And that is what they’re learning.”

As recently announced, Season 2 will incorporate parts of the fifth book in the series, The Long Game with casting news mentioned below.

Will there be new characters in Season 2 of Heated Rivalry?

Yes,  Justice Smith (I Saw the TV Glow; Now You See Me: Now You Don’t) and Charlie Gillespie (One Night Only, Splitsville, Suze) have just been cast in the second installment as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett, respectively, the couple at the center of Role Model, the fifth book in Rachel Reid’s bestselling Game Changers series.

Where will Heated Rivalry Season 2 be streaming?

In addition to HBO Max, Indian streamer Lionsgate Play has committed to the second season of the beloved ice hockey romance show. Sky in the UK will also skate into airing the second season once it comes out.

RELATED: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Explains Why Finale’s Sex Scenes Are His Favorite, Teases Season 2 & Beyond “Will Always Be Centered Around” Shane & Ilya

Originally created by Canada’s Crave, distributor Sphere Abacus sells the show to streamers worldwide.

Will there be more Heated Rivalry books?

Yes, author Rachel Reid has a seventh book in the works, and it will also focus on Ilya and Shane. Originally planned for publication Sept. 29, 2026, the next installment in the series, titled Unrivaled has been pushed back to June 1, 2027.

“A line has been drawn—and the hockey world is divided. For the first time in their professional hockey careers, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander have nothing to hide,” the synopsis for Unrivaled reads. “After more than a decade of keeping their love secret, they’re out, married, and even playing on the same team. The support has been incredible. Most of the time.” 

RELATED: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Author Rachel Reid Provides Status Update On New Book: “I Hope I’m Giving People What They Want Out Of This”

Reid’s Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened, making it more difficult to write. She cited this development as needing some more time to work on the book.

“There’s nothing more important to me than Unrivaled being the best book it can possibly be,” she said. “The writing is going well. I just wanna make a good book, and I need a little bit more time to do that.”

Are Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie working on other projects in entertainment?

Yes, both costars have films in the works, and Storrie recently hosted Saturday Night Live.

Williams is also set to star alongside Dylan O’Brien in Sofia Banzhaf’s thriller Apparatus. The darkly comedic thriller marks the feature directorial debut of Banzhaf, a Canadian actress (I Am in the World as Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain). Banzhaf cowrote the film with Grayson Moore (Cardinals).

RELATED: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Star Hudson Williams Skates Onto Connor Storrie’s ‘SNL’ Debut In Cameo

Apparatus follows struggling young rideshare driver Tyler (Williams) as he falls under the influence of a self-styled entrepreneur, JP (O’Brien), who offers him a future in his handheld-massager business. But what appears to be a dream opportunity unravels as JP pulls Tyler into a violent downward spiral.

Williams also has Yaga, Crave’s debut half-hour series about the myth of Baba Yaga, in the works. He will star alongside  Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek) and Clark Backo (Letterkenny).

Storrie will star in A24’s Peaked alongside Molly Gordon, Allie Levitan and Emma Mackey. Laura Dern (Is This Thing On?), Simone Ashley (Bridgerton), Levon Hawke (Blink Twice), Mitra Jouhari (The Big Sick), and Gabby Windey (The Traitors) have also joined the cast as has Dua Lipa.

RELATED: ‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Jacob Tierney Gets Netflix Series Order For Alexander The Great & Aristotle Drama; Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films Producing

Nearly 20 years after she was falsely accused of killing her roommate, Amanda Knox is still struggling to tell her own story.

The author and comedian, who was wrongfully convicted of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, has responded after a petition to cancel her Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Cartwheel surpassed 10,000 signatures.

“There is a petition to cancel my show at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Here is my statement,” she prefaced on Instagram. “Cartwheel is a show about motherhood, raising a daughter in a world that is unfair and dangerous for women, and what it costs to be the kind of mother who tells her the truth about that.

“Neither the author of this petition nor anyone who signed it has seen Cartwheel. The petition contains many false assumptions and completely mischaracterizes the show. Cartwheel honors Meredith Kercher’s memory and calls out the violence that was done to her and to me.”

Knox continued, “A petition to cancel a show no one has seen, on the grounds of false accusations intended to shame and vilify a wronged woman into silence, is not an argument against Cartwheel. It’s a fairly precise description of what Cartwheel is about and why it deserves to exist. And the Edinburgh Fringe is the perfect place for a show like this. 

“Many of the Fringe’s most celebrated comedy shows tackle difficult subjects including grief, trauma, mental health, addiction, illness, identity, and politics. Comics rarely treat these experiences lightly or make them the butt of the joke. Instead, they use comedy as a way to explore them, creating space for audiences to engage with complex ideas, connect through shared experience, and find moments of relief, perspective and hope in subjects that might otherwise feel overwhelming,” she wrote.

Started by Sally Alington, a former friend and co-worker of Kercher, the Change.org petition said the show “mocks the horrific events surrounding Meredith’s murder and aims to somehow turn this tragedy into entertainment,” calling for Fringe to “withdraw their support for this performance.”

Meanwhile, Fringe Society director Tony Lankester told BBC Radio Scotland the festival is “not afraid of controversy,” but the decision ultimately lies with the venue. A rep for the Gilded Balloon Teviot, which will host Cartwheel from Aug. 7-17, said they aim to “provide a platform for a wide range of voices, in line with the Fringe’s longstanding commitment to freedom of expression,” and will allow Knox’s show to continue as scheduled.

After Knox was convicted of Kercher’s murder in 2009 and sentenced to 26 years in prison, the conviction was overturned in 2011 and she was fully acquitted in 2015. The title of her Fringe show refers to claims she did cartwheels in the police station after being questioned over the killing.