Released: November 7, 2003 

Directed By: Jon Favreau

Screenplay By: David Berenbaum

Stars:  Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Edward Asner, Bob Newhart and a bunch of other actors.

Plot:  Raised as an oversized elf, Buddy travels from the North Pole to New York City to meet his biological father, Walter Hobbs, who doesn’t know he exists and is in desperate need of some Christmas spirit.

Taglines: A Comedy of Elf-fish Proportions

How did this movie do?
Budget: $33 Million
Box Office: $225 Million

• It has been rumored that Jim Carrey was considered to play Buddy.
  
  
• Garry Shandling was offered the role of Walter, but turned it down.
  
  
• The script was written in 1993. The film was optioned at an independent company called Motion Picture Corporation of America (MPCA), which wanted Chris Farley to play Buddy. In an interview on The Movies That Made Us: Elf (2020) writer David Berenbaum felt that it would have been a “completely different movie” with Farley in the lead and decided not to sell the project to MPCA.
  
  
• Due to his policy of appearing in family friendly films Chevy Chase was briefly considered for the role of Papa Elf by director Jon Favreau. However Will Ferrell vetoed this idea because he disliked working with Chase when he returned to guest host Saturday Night Live (1975) in the mid-1990s. Ferrell said Chase was the worst host he worked with during his tenure on that show.
  
  
• The elf Ming Ming, who appears briefly in the beginning of the film, is played by Peter Billingsley, who starred as Ralphie Parker in the classic holiday film A Christmas Story (1983).
  
  
• Wanda Sykes was originally slated to play the Gimbel’s Manager but backed out at the last minute. She was replaced by Faizon Love, who insisted on still wearing the nametag made for Sykes, which is why his tag inexplicably says “Wanda.”

• Jon Favreau mentions Will Ferrell’s line about the fake Santa sitting on a “throne of lies” is from Lord of the Rings.
  
  
• When Jon Favreau first read the script, it plays up that the cops are chasing Buddy near the end of the film. Favreau didn’t like this idea, so the Central Park Rangers, who Favreau compares to Ring Wraiths, were invented to replace New York City cops. The costumes were designed to reference Lord of the Rings, and the Rangers were always shot in silhouette to hide their real appearance.

• Several minor traffic accidents occurred when Will Ferrell walked through the Lincoln Tunnel in his costume, because people were so surprised (and distracted from their driving) to see him wearing an elf outfit.
  
  
• Will Ferrell turned down $29 million to be in a sequel in late 2014.
  
  
• The scene when Buddy eats different candies and pastries with the spaghetti noodles had to be shot twice, because Will Ferrell vomited the first time.
  
  
• Director Jon Favreau used a remote control to trigger the Jack in the Box toys to get the startled reactions from Will Ferrell.
  
  
• The cotton balls Buddy eats while in the doctor’s office were actually cotton candy that had not been dyed.
  
  
• The film is able to use elements from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) freely because that film is not properly copyrighted, containing an error in the Roman numerals of its copyright notice.
  
  
• On the final day of shooting in New York City, it was just director Jon Favreau, Will Ferrell, and a camera man driving around the city looking for locations to shoot. They would jump out and ask pedestrians if they would be willing to be extras for some quick cash, while Ferrell paraded around acting like Buddy. Much of the montage when Buddy first arrives in New York City was filmed then, such as when he is getting his shoes shined, and jumping between traffic.
  
  
• Screenwriter David Berenbaum’s first ever script. Berenbaum was raised Jewish, but his family always celebrated Christmas. He was a huge fan of the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964) of which Elf pays homage. Berenbaum’s father died when he was only 8 and the story is really about connecting and finding out about a father.
  
  
• Will Ferrell suffered from headaches throughout filming, as he had to actually eat all of the sugary foodstuffs in the Elf food pyramid on camera.
  
  
• The scene where the fake Santa is chasing Buddy had to be done in one take, because it was too hard to rebuild everything.
  
  
• The elf Ming Ming, who appears briefly in the beginning of the film, is played by Peter Billingsley, who starred as Ralphie Parker in the classic holiday film A Christmas Story (1983).
  
  
• The design for Santa’s Workshop as well as the elf uniforms come from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). The elf uniforms completely mirror the ones from the television special. Most of the animals in the North Pole are also designed to look like the same form of stop-motion animation used in Rudolph.
  
  
• Will Ferrell has no interest in reprising his role for a sequel in the years since, telling Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live back in 2013: “Absolutely not…I just think it would look slightly pathetic if I tried to squeeze back in the elf tights: Buddy the middle-aged elf.” He reiterated his position in 2017 in an interview with IGN.
  
  
• Director Jon Favreau drew Buddy’s crayon drawing of himself in the card he made for his dad.
  
  
• Will Ferrell’s brother Patrick played a security guard at the Empire State Building.
  
  
• The apartment in which Buddy’s dad lives is the same apartment building (exterior shot) in which Dana Barrett lived in Ghostbusters (1984).
  
  
• Mary Steenburgen, who plays Emily, Buddy’s stepmother and Michael’s mom also plays Will Ferrell’s mother in Step Brothers (2008).
  
  
• Most of the shots with Will Ferrell and Ed Asner in the workshop with the elves are forced perspective rather than CGI.
  
  
• Buddy’s twelve-second belch was supplied by voice actor Maurice LaMarche, best-known for his cartoon character, “The Brain”, from Pinky and the Brain (1995), and who also did the operatic belching in Animaniacs (1993) as “The Great Wakarotti”. LaMarche also worked with Will Ferrell on the animated series, The Oblongs (2001).
  
  
• Jon Favreau’s son plays Young Buddy sitting on Papa’s knee.
  
  
• At the time, Jon Favreau was a virtually unknown Director. He is now one of the top ten grossing Directors in Hollywood of all time.
  
  
• Zooey Deschanel performs three songs in this film. One of them is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, which she sings in the shower accompanied by Will Ferrell, and then sings again with Leon Redbone over the end titles. She later made an official recording with her indie duo She & Him, released on their album “A Very She & Him Christmas” released in 2011.
  
  
• The scene where Buddy and the fake Santa fight was filmed in front of a greenscreen and all of the kids were put onto the greenscreen in editing. They were filmed separately from the fight scene. This was due to the fact that it had to be filmed in one take and it was too dangerous having all of the kids in the scene. This is evident when Buddy is framed against the kids when he first sees fake Santa.
  
  
• Contrary to popular belief, Zooey Deschanel’s hair is not naturally blonde as seen in Elf. She dyed it for a project that was never released, and did her audition and screen test for Elf during that time frame. The studio did not want her to change it back because they hired her based on footage of her as a blonde.
  
  
• Will Ferrell’s first leading role.
  
  
• Before making the film, Jon Favreau would observe his 1-year-old son, Max, to get ideas for what Buddy might do. As Favreau notes, Max was his barometer for how believable Buddy’s antics were. Favreau also mentions when he feels Buddy knows he’s doing bad or believes he’s doing good, which makes a fun, little game throughout the film.
  
  
• When Buddy (Will Ferrell) goes to Gimbel’s to ask Jovie (Zooey Deschanel) out on a date, the song playing over the loudspeaker is “Christmas Island” sung by Leon Redbone. Redbone also provided the voice of Leon the snowman at the North Pole.
  
  
• Many of the sets were built twice, once much larger for the actors playing elves and once slightly smaller for the normal sized actors. In the scene where Ed Asner as Santa addresses his elves, he is standing on a platform on a smaller version of the set. The elves were standing on another platform far behind him. Lighting was used to blend the two images together.
  
  
• This movie was turned into a Broadway musical. It premiered November 2010, and ran through January 2011.
  
  
• In an early draft of the script, the other elves made fun of Buddy for being different and unable to work as fast as they could. Jon Favreau felt it better to keep the characters good-spirited and optimistic even though he’s different from them. “It explained why Buddy was doing all these good things in New York if he grew up in a world where everybody was so sweet even when he’s obviously screwing everything up and doesn’t fit in at all.”
  
  
• Buddy sees a sign in Gimbel’s Dept. store reading, “the perfect gift for that special someone” and buys lingerie for his dad. In the final scene of the family exchanging gifts on Christmas, the same lingerie is seen as having been gifted by someone.
  
  
• Bob Newhart claimed that of all the fan mail he received, usually half of it was for “Elf”.
  
  
• Leon, the snowman at the North Pole, is named for the singer Leon Redbone, who voices the character. Coincidentally, “Leon” is also “Noel” backwards.
  
  
• Jon Favreau likens the film to Big (1988), a film about a kid who is forced to grow up too quickly and learn his way around the big city. The director likes the comedy Will Ferrell brings to the film. “But if you don’t have a good story and an emotional aspect to the story people grow weary of just one comic bit after the next. I think they want to see a story that engages them on an emotional level.” Favreau brings up the bonding moments between Buddy and Walter like when Walter tells his son he doesn’t have to drink the coffee. He also mentions the different ways Buddy changes throughout the film, how he learns from the city and the people in it. Buddy reading Pigmalion is kind of a reference to that.
  
  
• While appearing on Cleveland’s 92.3 The Fan’s Bull & Fox show, James Caan said: “We were gonna do (a sequel) and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I finally got a franchise movie, I could make some money, let my kids do what the hell they want to do.’ And the director and Will didn’t get along very well…So, Will wanted to do it, he didn’t want the director, and he had it in his contract, it was one of those things.”
  
  
• Some of the sets like Walter’s apartment, Gimbals’ toy department, and the jail cell among them, were built in an abandoned mental hospital in Vancouver, the same hospital where New Line shot Freddy Vs. Jason (2003).
  
  
• Mark Acheson, who plays the guy Buddy is talking to and laying down with in the mail room, had auditioned for the role of a trucker. That part was cut from the film, but, because of his audition tape, Jon Favreau cast him in this role in the mail room. Favreau got notes from the studio pointing out that Acheson was clearly not 26. Favreau responded that, yes, this was clearly why it was funny that he says he’s 26 in the movie.
  
  
• The tree on fire in the early moments of the film was done using forced perspective. The top half of the tree is a miniature in the foreground. The bottom is roughly 40 feet away from the camera. The edges were then blended to make it appear as if it’s all one tree. Jon Favreau felt it important to us the “old techniques” rather than CGI. felt these techniques gave the film a feeling of nostalgia, like the old Christmas TV programs the director grew up on. One of the films he compares the technique to is Lord of the Rings, which, like Elf, is a New Line Film.
  
  
• The stop motion characters were done using two-frame stop motion. Every time the puppet would be moved, the character would be shot twice giving it a choppy movement and the feeling of how they looked in the old TV shows. Jon Favreau mentions all the stop motion was done by the Chiodo brother, three brothers who still do stop motion animation.
  
  
• Baby Buddy in the orphanage scene was played by triplet girls. The director credits their performance to editor Dan Lebental, who was able to make it appear they were doing everything Baby Buddy is seen doing. Favreau notes they had twin boys for the part, and the boys looked just like Will Ferrell with curly blonde hair. However, they wouldn’t stop crying and were promptly ejected from the premises, probably out into a cold Vancouver night.
  
  
• Production on the film began before Old School (2003) came out making Will Farrell a huge commodity. Jon Favreau recognizes the chance the studio took on green lighting Elf and notes how well New Line promoted Farrell and Elf after Old School came out in February of 2003. It’s rare for a film maker to delve into how well their film does financially on these commentary tracks, so it should be noted Favreau brings up Elf’s success. It debuted 2nd behind The Matrix Revolutions but came in 1st place its second weekend out. It was going up against The Matrix Revolutions in its second weekend, so, really, it wasn’t that fair.
  
  
• The Doctor, played by Jon Favreau, is able to give Walter, played by James Caan, paternity tests immediately after he tests Buddy, played by Will Ferrell. Blood paternity tests in real life are not rapid tests and can take up to week to get results.
  
  
• According to Jon Favreau, David Berenbaum wrote Elf as a spec script, meaning no one paid him to write it before doing so. Will Farrell became attached to the project while still at “Saturday Night Live”. Years later, the script was sent to Favreau who rewrote certain elements of the film.
  
  
• All of the elves, except for Buddy and Papa, have names that are a combination of two words (Ming Ming, Choo Choo, etc.)
  
  
• Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel appeared in Winter Passing (2005).
  
  
• Both director Jon Faverau and Peter Dinklage were in the MCU. Faverau plays Happy Hogan and features in many MCU projects where Dinklage features in Avengers: Infinity War.
  
  
• To shoot the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, production had to wait until after midnight and only then got four hours to get the scene, because a professional skater was performing the next day. The premier party was also held there.
  
  
• Meghan Black’s feature film debut. She played an elf.
  
  
• “And so he has his mission for act 3.” Jon Favreau brings up that, like so many Christmas stories, Elf is about an outcast who becomes necessary.
  
  
• James Caan and Mary Steenburgen also play husband and wife ten years later in the English version of The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013).
  
  
• Cameo – David Berenbaum: An office worker.
  
  
• Director Cameo – Favreau: Dr. Ben Leonardo, and the voice of the narwhal who says goodbye to Buddy.
  
  
• Buddy and Jovie’s baby’s name, Susie, is visible on her hat along with a large snowflake at the end of the movie. She was obviously named after Susie Snowflake, a very early claymation character from back in the 30s and Buddy’s deceased mother Susan Wells.