The Bizarre Saga of a Melissa McCarthy Christmas Movie That Won’t Die

The newly christened Warner Bros. Pictures Animation division has an upcoming slate of movies that are about what you’d expect from the studio. Dr. Seuss adaptations like The Cat in the Hat are in the pipeline. A new take on The Flintstones is headed to theaters. A pair of Robins from DC Comics lore will headline Dynamic Duo. Mostly, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation is focusing on exploring franchises everyone already associates with the Warner Bros. name. A glaring exception to this, though, is apparent in a title scheduled for release on November 5, 2027.

That date belongs to the Yuletide-themed animated movie Margie Claus, which will star Melissa McCarthy as the titular character. On the surface, that doesn’t sound like an especially unusual project for a family-skewing animation studio to embrace. However, Margie Claus has a very weird history to its name. Once it arrives in theaters, it’ll have been almost a decade since it was first announced in a radically different form.

The First Iteration of Margie Claus

In June 2017, Warner Bros./New Line Cinema announced that Margie Claus would hit theaters on November 8, 2019. The production was planned as an original musical following McCarthy as Santa’s wife who has to go looking for her missing husband. McCarthy had launched her star power through Universal comedies like Bridesmaids and Identity Thief. However, Warner Bros./New Line Cinema were clearly angling to make the studio her new home. 2014’s Tammy would McCarthy’s first star vehicle for this label, followed by Life of the Party in 2018 and The Kitchen in 2019.

Like Tammy and Party, Margie Claus would’ve been directed by Ben Falcone, McCarthy’s husband and longtime creative partner. A big Yuletide musical would’ve been a big shift in scope for Falcone’s filmmaking ambitions from the very grounded comedies he’d previously helmed. However, Falcone never got to demonstrate whether or not he could flourish in those creative confines. Margie Claus quietly died on the vine, with Warner Bros. never even sending out a big announcement confirming it was getting booted from its November 2019 release date.

Instead, the film just fell off the world’s radar with barely a whisper. McCarthy’s post-2016 comedies largely falling flat at the box office (including Warner Bros. titles Party and Kitchen) likely cooled the studio on the leading lady. McCarthy’s Superintelligence, once set for a splashy Christmas 2019 launch, instead dropped on HBO Max over Thanksgiving 2020. The honeymoon was over between McCarthy and this studio. Margie Claus was caught in the crossfire.

Why Did Margie Claus Come Back From the Dead?

As of this writing, there’s been no concrete explanation for how and why Margie Claus came back to life, especially as one of the first big project announcements from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. What is known is that McCarthy is still playing the titular character, though Falcone is no longer directing. Animation veteran Shane Prigmore is reportedly helming the project instead. This shift in creative personnel suggests Margie Claus, in its new form, will hew closer to Klaus and Arthur Christmas than The Boss in aesthetic.

Margie Claus’s resurrection could simply boil down to Hollywood’s abrupt re-embracing of Christmas movies. From 2020 to 2023, movie theaters were largely devoid of new titles in the mold of The Polar Express or Elf. November 2024, meanwhile, brought The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Red One to the silver screen. These titles are making a comeback and Warner Bros. brass may have been eager to find something to ride that wave. Why not, then, revive a production that was already deep in development, especially since it could give a fledgling animation studio another major project to work on?

One interesting wrinkle about Margie Claus: this project will mark McCarthy’s first time providing voice-over work for a theatrical animated feature. Since the 2015 DreamWorks Animation title B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations (which she was supposed to headline with Seth Rogen) was abruptly cancelled, Margie Claus will be McCarthy’s grand introduction to big screen animation. It’s not surprising this performer is anchoring a major American animated movie. What is surprising, though, is that it will be for a movie that basically died and then abruptly came back to life. Margie Claus has truly a bizarre saga that could ultimately prove more compelling than anything that ends up on the big screen.