Elf is one of the few modern Christmas movies to stand the test of time. Star Will Ferrell was just 37 when Jon Favreau’s comedy hit theaters in 2003. The film’s success, combined with a breakout role in Old School, minted the Saturday Night Live vet as a movie star (and Anchorman was just a year away).
Ferrell has gone on to do a tremendous amount of work in the last 21 years since Elf, both as an onscreen buffoon and an influential producer (his recent credits include Succession, The Menu, and May December). As showcased in his recent Netflix documentary Will & Harper, which documents his road trip with longtime friend Harper Steele shortly after Harper came out as transgender, he also seems like a genuinely nice guy.
So it’s heartwarming to see him pay respects to Elf, a movie that made him, years and years later in the most Will Ferrell way imaginable. At Sunday night’s Los Angeles Kings game, Ferrell rolled in with his family dressed as Buddy. He was very aware that the cameras would inevitably point his direction.
I choose to believe this is what the real Buddy the Elf looks like today.
Perhaps adding to Elf’s everlasting glow as a holiday-timed favorite is the fact that Ferrell never cranked out a sequel. Elf eventually got the Broadway musical treatment and Warner Bros. Animation premiered a stop-motion animated Buddy adventure on NBC in 2014, but there was never real momentum on an Elf 2, despite suggestions by those involved that a screenplay was written. The late actor James Caan, who portrayed Buddy’s dad in the movie, has suggested that Ferrell and Favreau did not see eye to eye on the set of the original and the friction killed any hope of a sequel. But in an interview earlier this year, Ferrell says he just wasn’t happy with the script, which felt like a rehash.
“I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, “which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money.’ And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.’”
So instead we have Ferrell occasionally turning up at live events in his Buddy costume, chugging beer and letting a cigarette dangle out of his mouth. Honestly, it might just be the best pitch for Elf 2 that anyone’s actually come up with.
The post Here’s what Buddy the Elf looks like today appeared first on Polygon.
