Christina Hendricks Joins BAD SANTA 2

Even as the dust settles on 2015, it's clear that one of the year's biggiest takeaways was, "Rebootquels don't always have to suck." Stack the deck with a returning OG director (Mad Max: Fury Road) or a powerhouse script (Creed) and you might even come up with something legitimately great. Should we be any less suspicious of years-after-the-fact sequels? No (Terminator: Genisys and Jurassic World). But maybe we're a little more hopeful than we used to be.

And we're gonna need it: the horizon is littered with sequels to long-dormant franchises, each and every one of them a massive question mark. The biggest one, of course, is Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (please don't suck), but I'm becoming increasingly interested in one of the smaller ones: Bad Santa 2. At the time it was announced, the project provoked much eyerolling, especially when it was revealed that original director Terry Zwigoff wasn't returning for the sequel. Any Bad Santa sequel would already be down one Bernie Mac: did we really want to roll the dice without a Zwigoff? Risky. 

But news on this questionably-necessary sequel has been largely great: Mean Girls director Mark Waters came onboard to direct (reminder: Mean Girls is a great movie), Kathy Bates was brought in to play Billy Bob Thornton's shit-talking, take-no-bullshit mom, and now Christina Hendricks has been added to the cast, in a role similar to the one played by Lauren Graham in Zwigoff's 2003 original.

The Hollywood Reporter's announcement contains a few further plot details - namely, that Hendricks' character is an "Ivy League-educated, upper class woman who runs a charity targeted by Thornton's mall Santa and his foul-mouthed, tough-as-nails mother" - but that's about all we know about the film at this time. 

Look, more Christina Hendricks is never a bad thing, and the rest of this actually sounds like it could be great. Fingers crossed that Bad Santa 2 turns out to be one of the good ones.