Olivia Wilde is making a list and checking it twice for her next film at Universal Studios. According to Deadline, Jennifer Aniston and Peter Dinklage will star as Mallory and Santa Claus in Naughty, an unconventional holiday film with Wilde driving the sleigh straight to theaters.
Wilde (The Invite, Don’t Worry Darling, Booksmart) will direct Naughty from a screenplay written by Jimmy Warden (Cocaine Bear, Borderline), based on Warden’s spec script. Naughty “follows Mallory, whose only hope of securing custody of her son from her gaslighting trash-bag ex is to find Santa Claus and convince him to testify in her divorce hearing.”
Wilde’s The Invite is a hit with critics
Fresh off her work on The Invite, which JoBlo’s editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, praised as “genuinely hilarious” in his review, Wilde has proven she knows how to get maximum comedic mileage out of an all-star cast, including herself, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton. In The Invite, Joe (Rogen) and Angela’s (Wilde) marriage is on thin ice. When they invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors for a dinner party, the night spirals into unexpected places.
When does Wilde’s next film get Naughty?
After The Invite was a hit with critics, word has it that Universal wanted to lock down Wilde’s next movie quickly. She says she always had Aniston and Dinklage in mind for the roles of Mallory and Santa Claus. Naughty is already set for a November 5, 2027, release, with Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap producing. According to reports, there was an all-night bidding war for Wilde’s The Invite during this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A24 eventually won the rights. The film has grossed nearly $32 million at the worldwide box office and has a 97% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
We love a unique movie premise here at JoBlo, and Warden’s script for Naughty sounds as strange as they come for a holiday-themed film. The thought of tracking down Santa Claus so that he can testify on your behalf is hilarious. If he truly is a jolly old elf, he’d need to agree. However, this means exposing his existence to the public, creating all manner of confusion worldwide. Would he risk that exposure to help a desperate mom out of a jam? We’ll find out when Naughty comes to screens.
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