Kristen Bell is joining Allison Janney and Ben Platt to star in The People We Hate at the Wedding, a comedy that sees Amazon Studios partnering with FilmNation to produce.
Adapting the novel by Grant Ginder, the comedy will be directed by Claire Scanlon and has a script by Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin and Wendy Molyneux, who are known for their Emmy-winning work on cartoon series Bob’s Burgers.
The story centers on a pair of struggling American siblings, Alice (Bell) and Paul (Platt), who reluctantly agree to attend the wedding of their estranged, wealthy half-sister in the English countryside alongside their mother, Donna (Janney). Over the course of the wedding week, the family’s many skeletons are wrenched from the closet, and the unlikely reunion gives everyone the motivation to move their own lives forward.
The companies see this as a modern wedding comedy with broad appeal, hitting anyone with a slightly dysfunctional family or anyone who’s been forced to attend a wedding they tried to avoid (which they hope is pretty much everyone).
Principal photography is due to commence September in London. Ashley Fox of FilmNation Entertainment and Margot Hand are producing.
The comedy extends the run of projects on which Amazon and FilmNation have teamed. The previous movies include comedies The Big Sick and Late Night, as well as this year’s YA romance, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.
Bell, repped by CAA and Schreck Rose, is coming off of four seasons of NBC comedy The Good Place, which garnered Emmy nominations as well as a Peabody Award. The actress, who is well known for voicing Anna in Frozen, is the narrator in HBO Max’s newly rebooted Gossip Girl and next stars with Kirby Howell-Baptiste in Queenpins, an STX that opens in theaters Sept. 10.
UTA Independent Film Group made the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.
