Ben Stiller makes an anticipated return to comedy acting and offers his contribution to the holiday film canon with Nutcrackers, a family comedy from filmmaker David Gordon Green that just unveiled its first trailer.
Premiering on Hulu on November 29, Nutcrackers follows the strait-laced and work-obsessed Mike (Stiller) as he is suddenly thrust into being a caregiver for his rambunctious, orphaned nephews. The project marks the first film in seven years for Stiller, who has been busy behind the camera on prestige series like Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora and Apple TV+’s Severance. Pic is in the tonal vein of the earlier films of Green, who has most recently been working on a Halloween horror trilogy, along with The Exorcist: Believer, HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones and other projects.
Hulu snapped the film up in an eight-figure deal following its world premiere as the opener for this year’s Toronto Film Festival.
The circumstances behind Nutcrackers‘ origins were pretty unusual, as Stiller’s four child co-stars — Homer Janson (13), Ulysses Janson (11), Arlo Janson (8), and Atlas Janson (8) — are real-life brothers who had never acted before. Green is friends with their mother, Karey Williams, who was a classmate of his at film school, and wound up filming the pic at both her family farm and dance studio.
Nutcrackers also stars Linda Cardellini, Edi Patterson, Tim Heidecker, and Toby Huss. In his review of the film out of TIFF, Deadline’s Pete Hammond called it “a purely entertaining and heartwarming family holiday movie that will make you laugh, cry and walk out feeling good.”
In addition to starring, Stiller produced through his Red Hour Films banner. Other producers on the project include Rivulet’s Rob Paris and Mike Witherill, John Lesher for Red Hour, and Rough House’s Nate Meyer. Rivulet fully financed the film, which Green’s Rough House developed with writer Leland Douglas.
