It’s shaping up to be a Huston family Christmas.
Siblings and Hollywood royalty Anjelica and Danny Huston are teaming on a new project, The Christmas Witch Trial of La Befana, a hybrid animated and live-action feature film that is currently shooting in Los Angeles and Ontario, Canada.
HighballTV confirmed the details of the film, which was written by David James Brock and HighballTV’s Melissa D’Agostino based on an idea they conceived with Matt Campagna who is also directing with D’Agostino, a frequent creative partner. Johnathan Sharp is producing.
The plot follows a peculiar court case that unspools after the children in a rural Italian village kidnap their legendary Christmas witch, played by Huston, and put her on trial in an attempt to stop her annual judgment from their lives. While casting a spell through witches, fantasy and Italian folklore, the project is said to touch on universal themes of grief, community, love and family. Danny plays the Befano to Anjelica’s Befana.
Actors Jesse Gervasi, Maya Misaljevic, Luca Doulgeris, Mia Swaminathan, Paolo Mancini, Tarah Consoli, Juan Chioran, Phil Luzi and D’Agostino round out the cast. The Christmas Witch Trial of La Befana marks the first animated feature for Canada-based production outfit HighballTV. Also of note: The film will feature a soundtrack of original songs penned by Brock, D’Agostino and Rebecca Everett.
The project marks a reteaming of the siblings who have partnered on a handful of Hollywood projects over the years. In a promotional video received by The Hollywood Reporter, the Hustons reveal both why they said yes to the project and how they first learned of the origins of the Befana, who has a well-known presence in Italian folklore.
“I learned a little bit about La Befana when I was doing The Life Aquatic in Rome with Wes Anderson. They have a festival in the wintertime before Christmas where La Belfana is celebrated and they have a lot of puppets and La Befana is flying [with] women on broomsticks,” Anjelica explained. Added Danny: “I grew up in Rome as a kid, so Befana was a very known character. She was, in a sense, competitive with Santa Claus [or] Father Christmas. Easter is a bigger occasion in Italy than Christmas is, so the brooms and the hooded Befana characters are very iconic.”
Anjelica described her as “a lovely, horrible witch,” a fact that also led her to say yes. “I like playing witches,” she added. “So that was kind of a no-brainer, and it just seemed fun, like a good time to do it.” She previously toplined Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 film The Witches. “I like playing bad witches,” the actress continued. “I played Morticia Addams, who’s a favorite witch, and the grand high witch in The Witches for Nic Roeg, and I have to say…that was one of my favorite experiences just because he really encouraged me to be bad and there was something blasphemous about her.”
Danny called it “a highlight of my career” to be starring opposite his sister in this role. They previously worked together on Mr. North, a 1988 adaptation of the Thornton Wilder novel that Danny directed and Anjelica starred in opposite Anthony Edwards, Robert Mitchum, Lauren Bacall and Harry Dean Stanton. More recently, they teamed on the 2006 small screen series Covert One: The Hades Factor opposite Stephen Dorff, Mira Sorvino and Blair Underwood. “It’s great to get this opportunity again,” Danny said.
Danny is coming off a busy few months that saw the veteran actor and filmmaker starring in The Crow, Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 and Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt. He next stars in The Naked Gun reboot opposite Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Kevin Durand. He’s repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment, UTA, law firm Myman, Greenspan, Fox, Rosenberg, Mobasser, Younger & Light and Julian Belfrage Associates in London.
Anjelica is repped by WME and Christian Hodell at Hamilton Hodell in the U.K. She next appears on the big screen in the John Wick spin-off Ballerina opposite Ana de Armas and in the BBC and BritBox’s limited series Towards Zero opposite Matthew Rhys, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ella Lily Hyland, and Mimi Keene based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.
