Christmas romances may be all the rage this year, but Netflix and Lifetime can take a backseat, because this is now officially the only holiday rom-com I care about. Variety reports that Kristen Stewart is in talks to star in TriStar Pictures Happiest Season, a new holiday film from Clea DuVall.
DuVall is set to direct the film from a script she co-wrote with Mary Holland. The film follows a young woman who plans to propose to her girlfriend at her family's annual holiday party, but runs into trouble when she discovers that her partner hasn't come out to her conservative parents. Marty Bowen and Isaac Klausner will produce with Jaclyn Huntling overseeing for Temple Hill. Hannah Minghella and Shary Shirazi will oversee the project for TriStar Pictures.
DuVall previously directed the indie comedy The Intervention, which followed a tight-knit group of four couples who head off to a weekend getaway that promptly falls apart when one of the couples realizes the whole event was staged as an intervention on their marriage. It was a smart, warm relationship comedy that was sadly by-and-large brushed under the rug, and I can't wait to see what she does with her next film. TriStar picked up the worldwide rights to Happiest Season, which will mark her first directorial effort at the studio level.
Stewart's next big studio project, Charlie's Angels, is at TriStar's parent studio, Sony. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the franchise reboot also stars Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska. Stewart's lineup next year also includes William Eubank's Underwater with Vincent Cassell and Jessica Henwick, and Benedict Andrews' Against All Enemies, in which she'll star as actress Jean Seberg.
In addition to being one hell of a force of representation for queer women, on and off screen, Stewart has been on a roll with her projects in recent years, including two knockout collaborations with Olivier Assayas in Personal Shopper and The Clouds of Sils Maria, and I'm excited to see pretty much anything she has on deck in the coming years. She's one of the actresses you can always count on to do something exciting and interesting, even when the end result isn't a home run (see: Lizzie).
