The nearly unbelievable but true tale of a $17 million fruitcake embezzlement scheme is finally getting the feature film treatment — with the help of Red Productions, a Fort Worth film company, and Jennifer Garner.
“Fruitcake,” based on the Texas Monthly story “Just Desserts,” is about a quiet, Corsicana-based accountant who managed to skim millions from the world famous Collin Street Bakery’s fruitcake factory.
“It’s near and dear to my heart. I think, gosh, I started on it in, like, 2018. … Then I finally got everything put together. All the stars had aligned. And in February of 2020, we announced we were making the movie with Will Ferrell and Julianne Moore,” Red Sanders, founder of Red Productions, said. “And that was a week before the pandemic hit, so it obviously got disrupted there.”
Red Productions was able to put together a small crew and debut a documentary on the same story in 2021, but the story begged for a larger treatment.
“We got a lot of momentum going last year, and then two strikes hit our industry,” Sanders said.
The crew is currently scouting locations, likely in or near Corsicana and Fort Worth, as it was important for Sanders that the film be shot in Texas.
As one of the founders of the Fort Worth Film Commission and a board member of the Texas Media Production Alliance, Sanders has been an integral part of advocating for increased film funding in the state and training programs to grow local talent.
Several agents have reached out to Red Productions expressing interest in working on the film, representing production designers, costume designers, hair stylists and other potential crew members.
“We’re really passionate about growing the workforce here, and the way to do that is by hiring people here,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to hire the people that have a track record on this type of project, and so that’s where it’s been hard in the past, especially for when larger productions come to town.”
However, the recent growth of productions has helped change that.
Taylor Sheridan, the creative force behind “Yellowstone,” has filmed multiple 101 Studios projects in Fort Worth, including “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” and, most recently, “Landman.”
The studio partnered with Tarrant County College and the Fort Worth Film Commission to create a certification program. Since launching in the fall of 2023, the Fort Worth Film Collaborative Certificate Program has graduated its first class and another 40 students currently enrolled.
“We will certainly have a focus on hiring people coming out of this new workforce development program with TCC,” Sanders said. “… Long story short, we’re gonna hire as many people from Texas as we can.”
Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board. Read more about our editorial independence policyhere
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.