As reported a week or so ago, the long developing Bad Santa 2 is finally set to start shooting in January. Billy Bob Thornton is, of course, preparing to slouch once more through the curmudgeonly seasonal shenanigans, and the news this morning is that the film now at last has a confirmed director. Mark Waters will be wielding the megaphone{
Also confirmed this morning are returning cast members Tony Cox and Brett Kelly. Cox, you'll recall, was the put-upon elf Marcus to Thornton's Santa Willie, while Kelly was the sadsack, never named Kid who decided Willie was the real Santa even though he knew he wasn't really.
Entourage's Doug Ellin has written the screenplay, and confirmed last year that Bad Santa 2 will remain firmly in the R-rated zone, with "hopefully a similar tone to the first one".
That tone came courtesy of a fractious post-production period between director Terry Zwigoff, uncredited co-writers the Coen Brothers, and the Weinstein Company. Cracking the misanthropic code ultimately involved reshoots that Zwigoff didn't participate in, so that while the finished film remains queasily dark, it isn't quite as black as Zwigoff envisioned. His director's cut surfaced on DVD a few years ago. If the theatrical cut is a feel-bad comedy, Zwigoff's is a feel-worse.
Quite where Bad Santa 2 will find the 12-years-later Willie, Marcus and The Kid, or what shape it'll find them in, remains to be seen. Shooting, as we said, gets underway in January, so if all goes according to plan, we can probably expect a Christmas, 2016 release.