“Sideways” director Alexander Payne and star Paul Giamatti will reunite on the David Hemingson-scripted comedy “The Holdovers”. Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly and disliked history teacher at a prep school in 1970.
With no family and nowhere to go over the Christmas holiday, he remains at school to supervise students with an inability to journey home. Soon only one remains – Angus, a good student undermined by bad behavior.
Joining them is Deerfield’s head cook – an African American woman who caters to sons of privilege and whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam.
These three very different shipwrecked people form an unlikely Christmas family, sharing comic misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England. Filming begins early next year on location in that same region.
This new project follows several stalled productions Payne was to helm, including a Mads Mikkelsen-led Netflix project, and the Adam McKay-produced black comedy “The Menu”.
Source: Deadline
