‘Pitch Perfect’ Team Working on Mrs. Claus Movie With Elizabeth Banks Set to Star

Among the many lessons of Entourage (that partying is awesome; that everything sort of miraculously works out when you are rich and good-looking; that showbiz is a twisted game dominated by the loudest bloviators) is that nugget that there’s no quicker path to continued success in Hollywood than sticking with a winning creative team. When studio executives see that a strong combination of collaborators was able to make a little magic once, they tend to trust them to do so again. By anyone’s measure, it was smart thinking for Pitch Perfect producers Max Handelman and Elizabeth Banks to keep their reputation strong and team once more for a new, developing project.

Team Pitch Perfect has tapped a new writer for this still-untitled project in John Riggi, the TV scribe with experience in the staff rooms for The Larry Sanders Show (funny), 30 Rock (really funny), and The Comeback (blisteringly funny). Riggi has imagined a Christmas film that takes a fresh slant on the traditional imagery of the holiday, focusing not on jolly old Santa but on his underappreciated, overworked wife. The gestating film would track Mrs. Claus as the trudges through the crucible of stress that is the month leading up to December 25, and though there’s been no confirmation as of yet, one would expect Banks to step in for at least a tertiary role — as she did with Pitch Perfect — if she doesn’t take on the Mrs. Claus role herself.

This sounds like a fine comic premise for Handelman and Banks to jump into, rife with the potential for the raunchy-but-not-too-raunchy subversions that made Pitch Perfect a crossover hit. Though, admittedly, the probability of launching an inescapable #1 hit single off of a movie about Mrs. Claus will be a bit dicier.