How the ‘Halloween’ Director Went From Slashers to Slapstick

After successfully reviving one legendary horror franchise and not quite managing to relaunch another, David Gordon Green needed a “bit of a palate cleanser.”

Since Halloween, his 2018 reboot of the John Carpenter slasher pic, Green has become a bit of a go-to-guy for mid-budget horror masters Blumhouse, delivering a full trilogy of new Halloweens — with Halloween Kills in 2021 and Halloween Ends in 2022 — as well as last year’s The Exorcist: Believer, an unsuccessful attempt to bring back the spinning-head world of demonic possession created by William Friedkin in his 1973 classic.

But after six years of screams and jump scares, “it felt like a time to reset,” Green says. “After doing a run of horror movies, I felt like switching gears.”

What Green did next was Nutcrackers, a family-friendly comedy starring Ben Stiller as Mike, an uptight workaholic who is forced to take over guardianship of his rambunctious, newly orphaned nephews. The holiday plot revolves around Mike slowly discovering their artistic talent — their mother was a gifted ballet dancer — then resolving to help them stage an original version of The Nutcracker for the town. Nutcrackers opens the 2024 Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 5. UTA Independent Film Group is selling worldwide.

Ben Stiller plays a workaholic who is forced to take in his orphaned nephews.

Courtesy of Nutcrackers LLC

“I have twin 13-year-old sons, and they’re always bugging me because they’re not allowed to see the movies I make,” says Green. “So I got to thinking about the movies I loved at 13, films like Uncle Buck and Overboard. The impetus of this movie was to try and connect to the mindset of my kids but through the movies of my own youth.”

But Nutcrackers is also, slyly, an attempt to test whether the Blumhouse model for horror movies — tightly controlling the budget but giving directors creative freedom — can work for comedy.

“I’ve had this wonderful relationship with Jason [Blum] and the team over there, and they really educated me on the value and marketability of independent horror films,” says Green. “Now, I don’t want to be making horror films for the rest of my life, but maybe I can apply a lot of these same methods, making films that are both commercial and creatively liberating, to other genres. [Blumhouse] isn’t doing that with comedy; nobody seems to be.”

There’s a comedy gap in the market. Focus Features did decent business with the Woody Harrelson sports comedy Champions ($16 million domestic), and Thelma, the senior-citizen action spoof, earned a respectable $8.7 million for Magnolia, but low-budget indie comedy breakouts have become a rarity.

The test will come at TIFF when Nutcrackers gets its first screening in front of an actual audience. “I’m thrilled about Toronto as a launchpad for a movie like this,” says Green. “The audience is a real film-loving audience. I’m very confident the TIFF audience will respond. Then we’ll see how the industry responds.”

This story first appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.