Cole Escola Joins Melissa McCarthy in Animated Holiday Musical MARGIE CLAUS

Tony Award winner Cole Escola has joined the voice cast of the upcoming animated holiday musical comedy MARGIE CLAUS, starring Melissa McCarthy. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, the film will hit theaters on November 5, 2027.

The movie’s logline teases a high-stakes Christmas Eve adventure: When Santa goes missing, his wife Margie Claus assembles a rag-tag team of long-retired reindeer to rescue Santa and save Christmas. The film is directed by Kirk DeMicco from a screenplay by BEN FALCONE and Damon Jones.

McCarthy and Falcone are producing the film through their On the Day Productions banner, alongside Michelle Wong, who recently produced the smash-hit KPop Demon Hunters. On the Day Productions, founded in 2013, has produced films including Tammy, The Boss, Thunder Force, and the acclaimed Netflix documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed.

Escola joins the project fresh off their breakout success on Broadway with OH, MARY!, which they wrote and starred in, earning the 2025 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. The play, which became a box office phenomenon at the Lyceum Theatre, received two Tony Award nominations, a Drama Desk Award, an OBIE, and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Escola also stars in Julio Torres’ HBO Max series FANTASMAS, and their television credits include Difficult People, Ziwe, At Home with Amy Sedaris (for which they won a Writers Guild Award), Search Party, Mozart in the Jungle, and The Other Two.