The adaptation, set for the screen in 2025, was billed as “chock-full of the Twits’ beloved tricks” during the Next On Netflix: Animation Preview event in Los Angeles on Thursday. It will see the “meanest, smelliest, nastiest people in the world” rise to power in their town, forcing two orphans and a family of magical animals to step in to save the town, themed around the “never-ending battle between cruelty and empathy”. The all-star cast, featuring US actress Martindale, British comedian Vegas, Black Swan star Portman and Game Of Thrones’ Clarke, was announced on Thursday.
Appearing on a video message, British actress Clarke joked that director Phil Johnston tricked her into becoming involved in the project. “He told me that I was going to be playing a Disney princess. An empowered, feminist Disney princess in the world’s first trillion dollar franchise.
“You want to know what I’m actually playing? A bed bug in Mr Twit’s beard. I’m a literal parasite,” she joked. Meanwhile, the “first ever animated film” from Love Actually and Four Weddings And A Funeral writer Richard Curtis is set for release on Netflix in December this year.
That Christmas is based on a trilogy of books from the British writer and features the voices of Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, and Jodie Whittaker – with Bill Nighy also on the bill. “It’s about Christmas, which is my favourite time of year, it’s such a focus of happiness and loneliness and joy and fear,” Curtis s.
