There’s been a big shakeup to the cast of Fruitcake, according to Collin Street Bakery, the famous sweets shop on which the upcoming film is based. Laura Dern, who was originally set to co-star alongside Will Ferrell, is no longer involved in the project, and Julianne Moore has stepped in to fill her place, according to a statement posted on the bakery’s website on Friday.
We’ve reached out to agents for Laura Dern and Julianne Moore for comment but have not heard back. A producer on the film declined to comment but hinted that an announcement would come at a later date.
Bob McNutt, president and CEO of Collin Street Bakery, is credited as a producer on the film. Max (son of the Fonz) Winkler is set to direct it.
Ferrell’s character is Sandy Jenkins, the former accounting executive who stole $17 million from the business between 2004 and 2013 while working at its flagship location in Corsicana. (The bakery also runs a large mail-order business.) In 2015, Jenkins pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the scheme, in which he wrote checks from the bakery to pay off his personal creditors. He covered his tracks by voiding each one in the bakery’s accounting system, then writing another check for the same amount to a legitimate vendor, prosecutors said. A U.S. district judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Last March, he died at age 70.
Jenkins’ story drew national attention for details like his and his wife’s multimillion-dollar watch and jewelry collection, $50,000 wine collection, $10,000 mattress, Santa Fe vacation home, private jet flights and small fleet of luxury vehicles — all of which prosecutors said they bought with the bakery’s money.
Prosecutors said Jenkins and his wife, Kay, spent about $11 million between 2005 and 2013 on their American Express “black” cards. Eiseman Jewels, deBoulle Diamond and Jewelry, Bachendorf’s and Neiman Marcus were among the Dallas luxury shops the Jenkins patronized.
Kay Jenkins received five years of probation for her role in the embezzlement. It’s her that Moore has apparently jumped in to play.
Moore made her most recent screen appearance in The Glorias, the Julie Taymor biopic about Gloria Steinem. It premiered at Sundance last month. In 2009, she starred with Colin Firth in Texas-born fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man.
Laura Dern picked up her first Oscar last month for Marriage Story, the Noah Baumbach drama starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver.
Fruitcake’s filmmakers have been quiet about what’s planned for the project since murmurs of Dern’s departure first picked up late last year. It was originally scheduled to begin filming early this year. A location has not been announced.
Trey Selman, the man behind the script — and a native Texan — said last year, “I think it’s singularly born of a place like Corsicana. Corsicana’s weird. If you look on a map, it’s not really in Central Texas, it’s not really part of the metroplex and it’s not really part of East Texas. So it’s really this sort of conundrum of identity. And even the people there, they’re very stridently like: We’re Corsicanans.”
