What are you doing this New Year’s Eve? If you haven’t made any plans yet, Garry Marshall has lined up the biggest cinematic party of the holiday season. The director, who previously helmed Nothing In Common, Pr­etty Woman, Runaway Bride and The Princess Di­aries, has brought together a stellar ensemble cast to follow up Valentine’s Day, his 2010 romcom.

The cast of New Year’s Eve is a veritable star-studded enterprise — there’s Robert de Niro, Mic­helle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, He­ctor Elizondo and Katherine Heigl. Whew! And that’s not all… there’s also Sarah Jessica Parker, Ashton Kutcher, Abigail Breslin, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Seth Meyers, Lea Michele, Til Schweiger and Sofia Vergara. Quite the New Year party!

Marshall also re-teams with screenwriter Katherine Fugate and producers Mike Karz and Wayne Rice for New Year’s Eve. Toby Emmerich, Samuel J Brown, Michael Disco, Josie Rosen and Diana Pokorny are executive producers. Oscar-nominated composer John Debney (The Passion of the Christ) is behind the soundtrack while Oscar-nominated Gary Jones is responsible for the costumes. Shot entirely on location in and around New York city, the New Line Cinema presentation will be distributed by Warner Bros Pictures.

Like his earlier film, New Year’s Eve puts together a series of holiday vignettes. The en­twined stories, set in pulsating New York city on New Year’s eve, are a celebration of love and hope. Set on a night when the entire world is looking to make a brand new start, some vignettes naturally focus on forgiveness and second chances.

But obviously, the New Year theme is woven into all the vignettes. So De Niro plays Harry Buckingam, a man dying in a hospital; Pfeiffer is Ingrid, an aggravated secretary keen to work on unfulfilled resolutions; Duhamel is Sam Ricker, a businessman eager to get to New York to meet a love interest; Heigl plays a caterer forced to work on the day the world celebrates; Swank is a producer of the Times Square New Year's eve show while Ludacris plays a cop keeping an eye on the festivities in Times Square. Biel’s Tess is a woman due to give birth on New Year’s day, Kutcher’s character hates the entire New Year hoopla while Bon Jovi is (what else?!) a successful rock star. How their lives interconnect on one particular day, and how things fall into place on the day of new beginnings is what this New Year’s Eve all about!

The 2003 British romcom Love Actually brought into the forefront the plot with multiple storylines occurring around a popular holiday. Many Brit critics said Valentine's Day was “an American version of Love Actually.” What will they say to New Year’s Eve? Marshall may be clear that his new film isn’t a sequel, but much like Valentine’s Day, there’s a lot of schmaltz — tears and smiles, sorrow and laughter, break-ups and make-ups abound as fates come together and split up. But obviously, it’s happily ever after at the end. New resolutions, new dreams and new beginnings, but an age-old denouement!