The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off its 2024 edition on a slightly different note: With a live-action holiday family comedy, Nutcrackers, starring Ben Stiller in his first feature starring role in seven years.
The movie, directed by David Gordon Green and written by Leland Douglas, follows Stiller as a Chicago real estate exec who must oversee his four wild, rambunctious nephews after their parents tragically die on their Ohio farm.
Green said he took on the project because he had “taken on a dark run of movies” with the Halloween pics.
“We’re in a comedic drought,” said Green about big screen comedies, which have been sidelined to streaming. By hopefully doing more of ’em, Green said he wants to “feed my intuition as an artist and what an audience has an appetite for.”
Stiller and Green appeared after the 8PM premiere screening at Roy Thomson Hall. The 6PM Princess of Wales screening was interrupted by a Pro Palestinian protest.
Last year, TIFF did go the family route on night one with Hayao Miyazaki’s North American premiere of The Boy and the Heron which went on to win the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.
