Jon Favreau Says the First ELF Script He Read Was Originally Much Darker and Rated PG-13

The Christmas movie Elf is one of the sweetest and most endearing holiday movies out there. It became an instant hit when it was released in 2003, and it has gone on to be a Christmastime staple, airing on multiple channels all December long. One of the best parts of the movie is the excessive optimism embodied in the wide-eyed and naïve Buddy the Elf, played by Will Ferrell.

This version of the movie we know and love wasn’t always written this way. The film’s director, Jon Favreau, recently sat down with Rolling Stone to talk about how he came to direct the movie, and why it didn’t appeal to him at first:

I had worked with Judd Apatow, who had nothing to do with Elf, when I directed an episode of Undeclared and worked on a pilot that didn’t get picked up. When I was working with him, his manager, who also managed Will, sent me a copy of [the screenplay of] Elf. I had already directed Made, and people knew me from Swingers. I took a look at the script, and I wasn’t particularly interested. It was a much darker version of the film. I liked the notion of being involved with Will in his first solo movie after SNL, but it wasn’t quite there.

The script eventually made its way back to Favreau, and he came up with the idea we know today:

I was asked to take another look at it. They were looking for somebody to rewrite it and possibly direct it. And I remember reading it, and it clicked: if I made the world that he was from as though he grew up as an elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, one of those Rankin/Bass Christmas specials I grew up with, then everything fell into place tonally. So for a year, I rewrote the script. It turned into more of a PG movie from a PG-13. He was a darker character in the script I had read originally. The character became a bit more innocent, and the world became more of a pastiche of the Rankin/Bass films. The studio [New Line] read it and agreed to make it, and that’s when I was brought on to direct.

It’s such a great concept. I’m so glad Favreau had the idea to fine tune it into a more wholesome movie. It just really works that way comedically, and he turned it into a classic.