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School of Rock's Mike White Writing Holiday Comedy Santa Wars

by Ethan Anderton
November 20, 2009

While Mike White might not be a household name, you've surely seen him in bit parts of movies like School of Rock, Orange County and more recently Gentlemen Broncos. And what you might not know is that aside from acting in those films, White has also written or produced those and several other projects. Now it looks like White has found his next project to write as Variety announces that he will pen Santa Wars, a holiday comedy based on the apparently true story of rival factions that developed within a union of professional Santa Clauses who became arch enemies during an epic Santa Claus civil war of sorts.

The chronicle of the Santa Wars were recounted on Ira Glass' popular public radio show "This American Life" as written by Joshuah Bearman (who will executive produce the film) that aired last December. The segment revolved around the battles that erupted after two men who made seasonal livings dressing up as Santas formed a union, the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, but then became bitter rivals. Thanks to SlashFilm we can direct you to the original segment (audio only since it's a radio show) on the "This American Life" website (just fast forward to the 22:30 mark). It's an amusing story to listen to.

Truly great holiday comedies are few and far between, but this sounds like a holiday comedy that I can get behind and hopefully won't be more junk thrown on the DVD shelf the following Christmas. For now this is just one more reason to look forward to Christmas, despite the movie not being ready by this Christmas.

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