Coens, Bill Murray team on twisted ‘Santa’
An off-beat comic dream team — The Coen Brothers, Bill Murray, and “Ghost World” director Tery Zwigoff — is joining forces for the seasonal comedy “Bad Santa,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Coens will produce the project, with Zwigoff directing and Murray starring as a con man who poses as Santa to rob shopping malls over Christmas, complete with an elf sidekick.
Their grifting ways are challenged, though, when they meet an eight-year-old who reminds them what Christmas is all about, The Hollywood Reporter said.
The project was written by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (“Cats & Dogs”). When Working Title films put the film into turnaround, Dimension Pictures snatched it up, got the Coens to do a rewrite, and signed on Zwigoff, the report said.