TIFF Opening Night Kicks Off With Non-Traditional Family Holiday Comedy ‘Nutcrackers’; Ben Stiller & David Gordon Green Rally Big Screen Comedies
deadline.comThe Toronto International Film Festival kicked off its 2024 edition on a slightly different note: With a live-action holiday family comedy, Nutcrackers, featuring Ben Stiller in his first starring feature role in seven years.
The movie, directed by David Gordon Green and written by Leland Douglas, follows Stiller as a Chicago real estate exec who must oversee his four wild, rambunctious nephews after their parents tragically die on their Ohio farm.
Green said he took on the project because he had “taken on a dark run of movies” with the Halloween pics and last year’s The Exorcist: Believer. “We’re in a comedic drought,” said Green about big screen comedies, which have been sidelined to streaming.
By hopefully doing more of ’em, Green said he wants to “feed my intuition as an artist and what an audience has an appetite for.” Stiller said he refrained from acting for a while as he was looking for the right script.
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