In mid-December of 1994, the Farrelly brothers blew the roofs off cinemas around the world with their gut-busting feature directorial debut, Dumb and Dumber. And so it’s fitting that Dear Santa, their first feature film team-up in a decade, arrives just three weeks before the 30th anniversary of their Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels-led buddy comedy.
In the intervening years, the Rhode Island-raised brothers, Peter and Bobby, have kept busy, as the former won two Oscars — including best picture and best screenplay — as the co-writer and director of Green Book (2018). Bobby also directed the underrated Woody Harrelson-led comedy-drama, Champions (2023), having produced and/or directed various other projects across both mediums until that point.
Directors Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly
Andrew Toth/Getty Images
But the brothers have remained close in the decade since their last go-round on Dumb and Dumber To, the sequel that marked the then-20th anniversary of their career-launching film. In 2018, they reteamed on the small screen by way of Peter and Bobby Mort’s existing dramedy series, Loudermilk, and they’ve been working for years on a Broadway musical adaptation of their highest-grossing film, There’s Something About Mary (1998). According to Bobby, the poetic timing of their filmic reunion turned out to be unintentional.
“It was a complete coincidence [that we reunited for a film on the eve of Dumb and Dumber’s 30th anniversary],” Bobby Farrelly tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Paramount+’s Dear Santa. “We did Dumb and Dumber in 1994 and then 20 years later, we did a sequel [Dumb and Dumber To]. Maybe, at the 40th anniversary, we’ll do another sequel.”
On top of producing the Jack Black-led Dear Santa together, Bobby directed the comedy-drama, based on a script that Peter co-wrote with Ricky Blitt. The co-writers re-conceived screenwriter Dan Ewen’s initial idea from 12 years earlier involving a dyslexic child who accidentally addresses a letter to Satan instead of Santa. The updated story now centers on an 11-year-old boy named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith), who mistakenly summons Jack Black’s “Satan” into a contentious Christmastime at home.
Peter — through a brutally honest personal anecdote about a former romantic partner — makes the point that supporting one another’s individual efforts can help longtime partners in all walks of life discover exactly how meaningful their collaborative relationship truly is. He also doesn’t rule out the idea of co-directing with Bobby again.
“I’ve definitely sat there and thought, ‘Fuck, I wish Bobby was next to me,’” Peter Farrelly admits. “If Bobby was on Green Book, I guarantee you it would’ve been a little better. I don’t know how, but I know it would’ve been better because he always makes things better.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, the brothers Farrelly also address the precarious state of the theatrically released comedy, before expressing their optimism about its future.
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Well, it’s nice to see the Farrelly brothers side by side again for a feature film. Was there any pomp and circumstance behind this reunion, or did it happen rather casually?
BOBBY FARRELLY Well, this is a project that we have been working on for a long time. Pete, how long ago was it?
PETER FARRELLY We started [Dear Santa] 12 years ago.
BOBBY FARRELLY We were making other movies at the time, but we started it then. Pete and Ricky Blitt wrote the script, and we finally got it right. I then directed it, and the two of us produced it, so it just seemed like the perfect time to do a joint production.
PETER FARRELLY Yeah, it wasn’t like, “Hey, what the hell? Are we going to do something together?” We just connected.
We’re right around the corner from the 30th anniversary of Dumb and Dumber. Did that factor into this reunion at all?
BOBBY FARRELLY It was a complete coincidence.
PETER FARRELLY Yeah, it’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years. I don’t know what happened there.
BOBBY FARRELLY But we honestly weren’t thinking along those lines.
PETER FARRELLY Going forward, we may continue to direct together. We’re not big planners. We take what the universe drops in our laps, and Dear Santa just came along.
BOBBY FARRELLY We did Dumb and Dumber in 1994, and then 20 years later, we did a sequel [Dumb and Dumber To]. Maybe, at the 40th anniversary, we’ll do another sequel.
PETER FARRELLY Yeah.
BOBBY FARRELLY Of course, we’d all have to reunite: me, you, Jim [Carrey] and Jeff [Daniels]. So maybe then.
PETER FARRELLY Yeah. By the way, during the last few years, we’ve done a TV show called Loudermilk. I write it, [Bobby] directs it, so we have been working together [on the small screen].
BOBBY FARRELLY We’re even trying to adapt There’s Something About Mary into a Broadway musical, so there’s a lot going on.
Not too long ago, I spoke to a director named Albert Hughes about his own sibling duo, the Hughes brothers, that went their separate ways, and he gave me his theory about why so many other sibling duos have split lately: the Coens, Wachowskis and Safdies. And he simply chalked it up to people being curious about what their solo identity might be. Does that track at all with the two of you?
PETER FARRELLY Absolutely, but for me, that would apply more to the writing department. As directors, when we have a script, I know what he’s going to do, I know what I’m going to do and it’s going to be the same thing 99 percent of the time. But we do have slightly different sensibilities when writing scripts. Sometimes, I feel like I’m being pushed this way, or I’m pushing him that way. And those fights, as you’re writing, they do wear you down. You think, “Well, what would’ve happened if we went that way instead of that way?” So there is something to that. You want to go off and see what you would do.
BOBBY FARRELLY Yeah, but I also wanted you to go off and see what you would do. And likewise, I’m sure, for me.
PETER FARRELLY Right.
BOBBY FARRELLY We worked together side by side for 20 years, and it’s like, “Yeah, if you want to do something on your own, go ahead.” And it’s the same for me, too. It’s kind of fun. Pete went out and made Green Book on his own, and he won a couple of Oscars, so it’s gone pretty good.
PETER FARRELLY I’ve been married nearly 30 years, but before that, I had this girlfriend. And she had this old boyfriend who was a treasure hunter, a pirate guy. They dug up pirate ships. One day, she said that he called and asked her to go down and work on a boat in Belize for two weeks. They were digging something up. But being that it was her old boyfriend, she asked if I was okay with that. And I said, “Sure. Of course, I’m okay with it.” I mean, what are you going to do? So I let her go, and she fucked him. It ended the relationship.
THE FARRELLY BROTHERS (Laugh)
That sounds like a movie idea.
PETER FARRELLY Yeah. But I’m glad I let her go. It’s better to know.
BOBBY FARRELLY It’s a little Romancing the Bone.
THE FARRELLY BROTHERS (Laugh)
After so many years of making decisions together, did you both encounter situations during your solo outings where you imagined what the other person might say at the time?
PETER FARRELLY I’ve definitely sat there and thought, “Fuck, I wish Bobby was next to me.” I’ve had questions and doubted things, and usually, I could just say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And his answer would make me feel better. I’ll go, “I think this is it. What do you think? And he’ll go, “That’s it.” Then I don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s done.
BOBBY FARRELLY Yeah, when there’s two of you, you’re allowed to make decisions quickly, and then move on to the next scene. There’s an economy to that where you make your day every day, and it’s huge. You’re not under a tremendous amount of stress because you can’t make a decision about whether or not a scene is finished. There’s a lot of stress that goes with that, and so we did that for 20 years. We had each other to say, “I think we got it,” or, “No, I don’t think we have this scene. We don’t have the funny punchline I’m looking for.” And then you redo it. So there’s a lot to having that second opinion, but after 20 years, we got to the point where we felt like we could do it on our own.
PETER FARRELLY But I’ve said this many times, and it’s the God’s honest truth. If Bobby was on Green Book, I guarantee you it would’ve been a little better. I know it would’ve been. I don’t know how, but I know it would’ve been better because he always makes things better. It was still good to go off and do my own thing. But when you have somebody who’s your brother, who you trust a hundred percent to have your best interest in mind, there’s nothing like that support. So you do miss it, sometimes.
Robert Timothy Smith as Liam in Dear Santa.
Paramount Pictures
As someone whose name is often misspelled as “Brain,” I immediately bought into the Dear Santa premise of a dyslexic kid addressing a letter to Satan instead of Santa. But, as you said, a version of the script had been around for 12 years, so what turned out to be the breakthrough?
PETER FARRELLY Ricky Blitt deserves a lot of credit.
BOBBY FARRELLY Yeah, Ricky Blitt is the other writer that Pete wrote the script with, and we’ve written a lot with him. He is a very talented writer.
PETER FARRELLY It came from [executive producers] Pete Jones and Kevin Barnett, based on an idea by Dan Ewen. We beat it around here and there, tried it, but it didn’t quite work. I then wanted to give it another stab.
BOBBY FARRELLY Jeremy Kramer was the studio exec who originally shepherded this project with us over at Fox, and he never gave up on it. He kept suggesting, “What about this? Can we get back to it?” And, eventually, Pete and Ricky got back to it and wrote this new draft. There had been some other drafts that didn’t quite work.
PETER FARRELLY Jeremy Kramer really pushed me to get to it. So I brought in Ricky because he wrote for Family Guy for many years, and I thought it was tonally very similar to this. And his sensibility popped it open for me to where I could finally see where this could go. So that was the breakthrough.
BOBBY FARRELLY Yeah, it can take a while to get things right. Sometimes, you have to step away from something and then come back to it in order to see it in a different way.
To cast someone who can play a cross between Satan and Santa, was Jack Black at the top of a very shortlist? (The trio previously worked together on 2001’s Shallow Hal.)
BOBBY FARRELLY He was absolutely at the top. He was the perfect guy for it, but we didn’t know if we could get him. He’s a busy guy, and maybe he wouldn’t respond to the role. But once we sent him the script, he texted us back two hours later to say, “I was born to play this role,”
PETER FARRELLY And he texted me a picture of him with horns. It was the quickest response we’ve ever got from any actor. We couldn’t believe it. And it was the same thing with the musician, Post Malone.
BOBBY FARRELLY Yeah, we got lucky with the two huge roles in the movie. We got the perfect guys for each role, and that helped us a lot.
Robert Timothy Smith, Jaden Carson Baker, Jack Black and Post Malone star in Dear Santa.
Yeah, a Post Malone concert serves a major purpose in the film. If Post happened to not be available, did you have a backup plan?
BOBBY FARRELLY Well, we would’ve had to figure out who else these 11-year-old kids would love to see in concert, and I’m sure there’s a list of performers that we would’ve thought of. But all I know is that I’m so happy that Post did it because he was the perfect guy. But if you don’t get who you want, the right person will eventually come to the part. So the fact that we got Post and Jack upfront was different than normal, but they were the right people for the parts.
PETER FARRELLY You want who you want, but you never sweat it, at least we don’t. Jim Carrey was the 150th guy we offered Dumb and Dumber to, and now you can’t imagine anyone else being [Lloyd Christmas]. So it worked out. I always say, “If you get everything you want, it’s going to be as good as you could have imagined it. But if you don’t get everything you want, let the universe help out and it might be even better.” So, as much as we wanted Jack — and thank God we got him — we never sweat it. We just wait and see where it’s going to land.
BOBBY FARRELLY Sometimes, you’ll ask a friend or a guy that you’ve worked with to take a look at a part, and he’ll say, “Yeah, it’s not for me.” And it’s like, “Okay, no problem. No hard feelings whatsoever.”
PETER FARRELLY None.
BOBBY FARRELLY That person just didn’t respond to that role, and that means they weren’t the right person for it.
Jack Black and Robert Timothy Smith in Dear Santa.
Paramount Pictures
To the frustration of those around him, the character of Liam holds onto his belief in Santa for longer than he probably should. Did either of you have any childhood beliefs that you had a hard time letting go of at the time?
BOBBY FARRELLY We all hang on to wishes and beliefs a little too long, sometimes. Liam, who’s only 11, is at that age where some of the other kids have let go of some of his beliefs, but his reasoning is that he was doing it for his mom. He’s a really good kid who’s going through a tough time, but he’s coming from the right place. And, for us, as filmmakers, that’s always a really important ingredient in our stories. Our lead character may have some shortcomings and all that, but if you think he’s coming from a good place, then we can get away with a lot more, comedy-wise. We can go further if you like the guy, and that’s been the secret ingredient that we’ve always believed in. That’s also how it works with Liam, and Robert Timothy Smith did a great job playing him.
I’m sure you’re often asked about the state of the studio comedy. There are exceptions here and there, but the genre and its subgenres are not as theatrically dominant as they once were. Is it partially because audiences are getting their comedy through superhero/action movies?
PETER FARRELLY That is a very complicated question, and I certainly don’t know the answer, but there’s so much comedy online that people are getting their fix of things. Today, when I woke up, I saw five TikTok-y things that were hilarious. Maybe 20 years ago, someone told me that 35 percent of all movies released in theaters were comedies, and now it’s like 6 percent. So I don’t exactly understand why, but I do know that if there are a couple of big comedy hits in theaters, they’re going to go back up to 35 percent. That’s how it goes. When we did There’s Something About Mary, R-rated comedies were dead. They were like, “They don’t work. They don’t want to go to them.” They’d been soft for 10 or 15 years. You had John Hughes movies, which are great, but they weren’t pushing it. They weren’t edgy. So it was very hard to push that into the R-rated territory, but once we did, everybody wanted to do an R-rated comedy for a long time. And then they burnt out.
BOBBY FARRELLY It’s cyclical, yeah.
PETER FARRELLY But I think it’s coming back. I have not given up on comedies. They’re never going to go away. It’s like saying music is going to go away.
BOBBY FARRELLY People do love to laugh, but you raised a good point that kids’ attention spans have gotten a lot shorter for a variety of reasons. They’re sending memes and TikToks back and forth now. So the comedy movie itself is a little bit more challenging, but I do think it’ll come back. A couple of big hits will bring back a wave of them.
The aforementioned Dumb and Dumber made nearly $250 million on a $17 million budget in 1994 currency. Does it bum you out that your success story probably wouldn’t happen in 2024?
PETER FARRELLY What bums me out is that we didn’t have a backend on that one or on There’s Something About Mary, which cost $23 million and made $475 million. It also bums me out that they’re not releasing comedy movies in theaters right now, but I’m happy to be on this thing. The way [Paramount+] is pushing it, more people will see Dear Santa in the next couple of weeks than they would in the theaters. By the way, it’ll then go onto other streaming services, so it’s going to be seen very much, and that’s ultimately what you want. But I do miss sitting around and having an experience with 500 people where you’re all feeling it at once.
BOBBY FARRELLY Particularly with comedy. Laughter is contagious. When you hear someone else laugh, you do it involuntarily. You just laugh together.
PETER FARRELLY And it gives you permission to laugh. Some people can’t laugh unless they hear other people laughing. They think, “This is okay,” otherwise they’d feel silly.
BOBBY FARRELLY If you went to a comedy and you were the only person in the theater, you probably wouldn’t laugh out loud that much. But if you’re with other people, there’s something about it that makes you guffaw.
Director Bobby Farrelly and Jack Black on the set of Dear Santa.
Paramount Pictures
Despite being too young to buy our own tickets, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary were formative theatrical experiences for me and my friends. So it’s a little heartbreaking that kids today don’t have anything comparable as far as broad comedy.
BOBBY FARRELLY I agree with you. It’s a sad thing to watch how fewer people go to the movie theaters now and to see the difference in the way people view movies, certainly comedies. It’s been a while since there’s been a big hit comedy in the theaters, a raucous comedy, but you never know when it’ll come back. If somebody comes along and makes one that hits the funny bone, then people will come out to it.
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Dear Santa is now streaming on Paramount+.
