Holiday comedy calendars just got a star package. Universal has set Jennifer Aniston and Peter Dinklage to lead Olivia Wilde's Naughty, with a theatrical date of Nov. 5, 2027. Aniston plays Mallory. Dinklage plays Santa Claus. Wilde directs after The Invite.
The pitch, in Universal's words
This is not a warm-cocoa Santa origin story. The studio's own logline puts Mallory in a custody fight, then sends her hunting the North Pole's boss for courtroom help:
Mallory, whose only hope of securing custody of her son from her gaslighting trash-bag ex is to find Santa Claus and convince him to testify in her divorce hearing.
Jimmy Warden (Cocaine Bear, Borderline) wrote the screenplay from his original spec. When the package first circulated in 2023, the shorthand was Bridesmaids energy at the North Pole. The new casting makes that joke concrete: Aniston as the desperate mom, Dinklage as the witness in the red suit.
Who is making it
Wilde directs. LuckyChap (Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara, Milan Popelka) produces with Wilde and Warden. Universal's Sara Scott and Jacqueline Garell oversee for the studio. That LuckyChap banner matters if you track holiday tentpoles: the company knows how to sell a big-swing comedy premise without sanding off the edge.
Wilde's directing stack is now Booksmart, Don't Worry Darling, The Invite, then Naughty. While promoting The Invite, she told SmartLess she was lining up a Christmas comedy to shoot next, which matches this Universal slot landing after her dinner-party hit.
For tone on what she just finished, A24's Invite trailer is still the cleanest public sample of her latest comedy gear:
