Vertical picks up holiday comedy Unbearable Christmas
Vertical will release the holiday comedy Unbearable Christmas this holiday season, lining up a new family scramble for the year-end schedule. The distributor is pairing the release with an exclusive streaming deal to be announced soon, as reported by Deadline.
Alex Moffat leads as Troy Tipton, an out-of-work weatherman down on his luck. He travels from Ohio to Florida to buy back a pawned teddy bear. The bear turns out to be a Teddy Roosevelt-era antique worth millions, according to Deadline.
Moffat stars alongside Julia Stiles, Caroline Rhea, Mena Suvari and Stephen Root. The wider cast includes Kennedy Moyer, Ben Lewis Doherty, Blake Sennett and Valyn Hall, with a cameo from weather presenter Al Roker.
The film is the debut feature of writer-director Kevin Cate, who wrote the screenplay with Sennett. Sennett and Cate produced through their company Clinging Vine Films, with Rick Kearney, Stiles and Moffat credited as executive producers, the senior backers who help finance and guide a production.
The distribution deal was negotiated by Rachel White and Tony Piantedosi for Vertical and Jason Ishikawa and Isadora Johnson of Cinetic Media, which handles sales for the film-makers, as reported by Deadline. Cinetic Media is a sales agency that brokers rights between producers and distributors.
The project was shot as an independent film in Georgia, according to an earlier report by Deadline. Independent here means made outside the major studio system before securing distribution.
What makes this stand out for holiday viewers is the set-up. A lost toy. A road trip south. A fortune hiding in plain sight. Vertical has not yet dated the streaming launch, so the next announcement will fill in where and when audiences can watch.
