'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever' trailer: Lauren Graham, Judy Greer, and Pete Holmes star in holiday movie
First look at the book turned film, from director Dallas Jenkins
It's Christmas in July this week, with the first look at the upcoming holiday movie The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The film, directed by Dallas Jenkins (The Chosen), features stars Lauren Graham, Judy Greer, and Pete Holmes.
The new trailer for the film, being released November 8, teases a "Christmas miracle." It starts when Greer's character Grace is responsible for her town's 75th annual Christmas pageant.
"It's going to be the best Christmas pageant ever," she tells her family, including her husband Bob (Holmes).
But when a group of six children, The Herdmans, with a reputation of being some poorly behaved kids, show up to be part of the church show, Grace is facing pressure to kick them out.
"We'll be missing the whole point of the story if we turn them away," Grace says in the trailer.
Based on the book by Barbara Robinson, Graham will play the film's narrator, who is still expected to have an on-screen moment.
Jenkins has been on a 15-year journey to try to get the rights to the novel "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever", to make this film.
"Fifteen years ago my wife and I brought home the book, 'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever' and read it to our kids for the first time, and cried like babies," Jenkins says in a video posted online. "I laughed out loud, I cried out loud, I couldn't read, I was crying so hard."
"I said, when I finished reading, I have to make this movie. Unfortunately the rights were somewhere else. ... I kept getting told no, that I couldn't make it. ... I would prepare things, I would write things, I had notes in the book, I pictured what the movie would look like, what it would feel like. And then finally a few years ago I checked in on the rights again, they told me that the studio had forgotten to extend it, and that the mom of one of the rights holders was a big fan of The Chosen and told him, 'You've got to work with this guy.' ... This is a dream come true for me."
