An all-star cast of actors and comedians has been announced for Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming movie about Pop-Tarts.
Seinfeld, 68, is director, producer, writer and star of the film “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story,” which he is making for Netflix. The movie represents his directorial debut.
The cast includes Hugh Grant, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, James Marsden, Christian Slater, Jim Gaffigan, Bobby Moynihan (“Saturday Night Live”), Jack McBrayer (“30 Rock”) and Max Greenfield “The Neighborhood”), Netflix announced last week.
This Pop-Tart project, which was first announced about a year ago, will tell the story of the creation of the famed rectangular toaster treats that first came to market in 1964.
Netflix’s cast announcement provided a description of the movie. “Michigan, 1963: Kellogg’s and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever.
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“A tale of ambition, betrayal, sugar, and menacing milkmen, ‘Unfrosted’ stars writer/director Jerry Seinfeld,” the announcement said.
Co-writers of the movie with Seinfeld are Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder.
Feresten and Robin were writers on “Seinfeld.” Marder was co-writer, along with Seinfeld and Feresten, of Seinfeld’s 2007 animated feature “Bee Movie.”
Though “Unfrosted” will be comedic and largely fictional, the rivalry between Kellogg’s and Post to develop a new kind of convenient breakfast pastry in the early 1960s happens to be true.
According to Wikipedia, Post was the first among the two cereal giants to develop a sealed foil package that could keep foods such as mass-produced baked goods fresh on store shelves for long periods of time.
As a result, Post was the first to come out with its own pastry, which the company called Country Squares. But Kellogg’s jumped into the fray with its own brand, Pop-Tarts, a name inspired in part by “pop art.”
Kellogg’s then overtook Post in the breakfast pastry arena and today Pop-Tarts are said to be Kellogg’s’ top-selling brand.
As Seinfeld fans know well, the comedian has a self-professed love of breakfast cereal. Cereal boxes were always seen on a kitchen shelf in Jerry’s apartment set in “Seinfeld.”
But from time to time, he has also revealed a fascination with Pop-Tarts. Among other places, he raised the subject in a 2020 standup special for Netflix, “Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill,” in which he described the joy he felt as a child when he came upon the toaster-ready tarts on a supermarket shelf for the first time.