Bobby and Peter Farrelly unveiled the first look at their new movie Dear Santa on Wednesday, starting with images of Jack Black playing Satan. movie is about a young boy who makes a spelling error in his letter to Santa Claus, inadvertently inviting Satan to visit his home instead. While Black is dressed in red and white fur, it’s pretty clear that he’s not jolly Saint Nick.
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The first-look images from Dear Santa were published by Entertainment Weekly, who spoke with the Farrelly brothers about this long-anticipated project. Black appears unusually subdued, but his costume more than makes up for it. The colors are all right, but the texture of the fur is more menacing, and he is festooned in leather belts and chains. The Farrellys revealed that they’ve been working on this idea for about 15 years, but they needed to give it time to take shape. The duo last worked together on Dumb and Dumber To.
“It’s a long-percolating movie, like all our movies,” said Peter. “By the way, Dumb and Dumber took five years to get made. There’s Something About Mary was a 10-year-old script when we rewrote it. Kingpin was an old script when we rewrote it. They take a while to get there, and this was the case with this one.”
Bobby explained that they landed on Black to play Satan because they wanted someone who could come off as “diabolical, but in a fun way.” He went on: “Jack is just that guy that with his arching eyebrows and his faces and all that, there’s a little bit of mischievous to him at all times, but he’s eminently likable, and that’s just Jack. We never wanted to make it a horror movie or something like that. We wanted it to be comical. So it was a delicate ball of playing this iconic character but doing it in a way that the audience can have some fun with it. And Jack was the perfect guy.”
Black was reportedly very enthusiastic to join the movie, telling Bobby he “was born to play this role.” The filmmaker said that Black took the initiative to send them a photo of himself in a homemade costume, which ended up inspiring the final look for the movie.
The starring role goes to Robert Timothy Smith as Liam Turner, the boy who summoned evil into his house on Christmas. Other child stars include Jaden Carson Baker and Kai Cech, while adults Brianne Howes, Hayes MacArthur and PJ Byrne fill out the cast. Bobby shouted out Keegan-Michael Key, saying: “Keegan, anytime you can get him in a comedy, it’s a home run. And I was just so happy when we had a role that I thought Keegan would be great for. Keegan plays the kid’s therapist, and he just as always knocks it out of the park and he comes with ideas, and he’s just so much fun to work with.”
Fans won’t have to wait long to see this one for themselves. Dear Santa premieres on Monday, November 25th on Paramount+.
