Our last few months in quarantine has meant a shift in the usually pristine and polished celebrity content we’re used to seeing. We’ve been given unprecedented looks inside Hollywood homes, along with at-home content filmed without the usual grandeur celebs are used to – and now a remake of classic ’80s film The Princess Bride is coming, but it’s not the typical reboot you’d expect.
While stuck at home, director Jason Reitman recruited A-listers – including Tiffany Haddish, Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, Josh Gad, Hugh Jackman, and Jennifer Garner – to shoot the fan-film. The remake will air on Quibi, one chapter at a time, with new installments dropping daily for two weeks.
“The week that the stay-at-home order came through in California, I just woke up one of the first mornings, I think like most people did, feeling as though, all right, I need to be able to do something of value,’ Reitman told Vanity Fair. “I just thought, Can we remake an entire movie at home? And I had seen that a fan-made Star Wars had been done. I just started reaching out to actors I knew, saying, ‘Is this something you’d want to do?’ And the response was kind of immediate and fast. It was like, ‘Oh—that sounds like fun.'”
The publication debuted some footage from the film, including Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner’s scene, in which Joe played Buttercup (in full drag) and they cast their corgi as an R.O.U.S. (“Rodent of Unusual Size”).
The actors and editing team involved all volunteered their time for the project, and the streaming service made a $1 million donation to World Central Kitchen for the rights to distribute the video. The donation will fund approximately 100,000 meals for people in need.
“They’re all donating their time,” Reitman explained. “They’ve been working tirelessly for the last two to three months to create an entire movie from scratch, just because. The money is for a good cause, and it’s fun to connect with a movie you love. In recreating it you get to feel a little bit of what it was like to make the original.”