Will Ferrell very rarely ventures outside of his tried and trusted wheelhouse of acting like a petulant man-child, but you can’t deny that it’s brought him serious success over the last two decades. That being said, the actor and producer turned 54 years old yesterday so he can’t keep it up forever, but he’ll be heading into slightly uncharted territory as the Ghost of Christmas Past in upcoming festive musical Spirited.
It goes without saying that Ferrell is no stranger to the holiday movie having headlined one of the subgenre’s modern classics with Elf back in 2003, but Spirited is an altogether different proposition. A modern day update of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ryan Reynolds stars as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge surrogate, who’ll no doubt be forced to reckon with the errors of his ways after receiving visits from a trio of spectral figures.
Reynolds shared the first look at the film a couple of weeks ago, and some new BTS images have now revealed his co-star spotting a rather nifty emerald green jacket, which you can check out below.
AppleTV+ must be betting big on Spirited becoming a huge hit, based on nothing but the money the platform is spending on talent alone. For starring and producing, Reynolds and Ferrell are reportedly picking up over $30 million each, and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer surely doesn’t come too cheap, either.
Daddy’s Home duo Sean Anders and John Morris are on writing and directing duties, but with shooting only having started at the beginning of this month, it isn’t clear if Spirited will be ready on time for the Christmas period. If not, we’ll have to wait until 2022, because there’s really only one time of year you can release a project like this.