Members of the cast of the modern holiday classic Elf gathered for a live script reading via Zoom. Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, and others are coming together in support of U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, who are in a closely-watched runoff election in the state of Georgia. Since the Georgia runoff will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, it has become the latest battleground in the seemingly never-ending 2020 election. Comedian Ashley Nicole Black hosted the event and also took part in the reading, which also brought back original cast members Bob Newhart, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen, Kyle Gass, Amy Sedaris, and Andy Richter.
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The goal for the event was to raise $400,000. By the end of the broadcast, donations had reached $402,966. Fans who missed it and wish to see it can still find some clips on YouTube and Twitter, although the event itself was a one-time-only thing, likely due to the rights to the screenplay and music.
Directed by future Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau, Elf centered on Buddy the Elf (Ferrell), a human baby who had been raised at the North Pole but who discovered as an adult that he was human, and traveled to the United States to find his birth father.
“Elf made money and I was sort of on a list of directors that were hireable,” Favreau joked recently, explaining how he transitioned from the box office flop Zathura to helm the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film.
As revealed in The Holiday Movies That Made Us, (a Christmas-themed spinoff of the Netflix series The Movies That Made Us) which has an episode focused entirely on the making of Elf, the roaring success of Old School made the studio nervous that Ferrell wouldn’t work as a family-friendly lead, and almost took the film away from Favreau. By that point, Favreau had turned in his cut of the movie, distributor New Line wanted to re-edit it to their own liking.
“I got a call from Jon, he was in the editing process, he basically delivered his cut and he let me know that New Line took the movie away from him,” Production Designer Rusty Smith said. “They tried to re-edit it into something else. We had been so committed to Jon’s vision and his way of executing that film that they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t re-edit it that the studio thought was better.”
…Seems like it turned out alright.
