Jerry Seinfeld had lofty dreams for his film directorial debut. The comedian said on Tuesday he wanted to cast Daniel Day-Lewis as a sugar drug lord in his Netflix Pop-Tart comedy Unfrosted.
“We have a sugar drug lord who controls all the world’s sugar, his name is El Sucre,” Seinfeld explained during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to play it like Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood,” a reference to Day-Lewis’ Oscar-winning performance as a ruthless oilman during the 19th and 20th century Southern California oil boom.
(There Will Be Blood is one of three Oscars that Day-Lewis has won; he was also knighted by the British monarchy in 2014.)
Unfrosted co-writer Spike Feresten previously mentioned the Day-Lewis dream to ScreenRant, saying, “We would watch There Will Be Blood, and that end scene, where they’re beating each other up with bowling pins, all that’s happening there is that they just ran out of money and the director came in that day and said, ‘Look, just do something. We’ve got an hour left. Kill each other, I don’t care. But it ends today!’”
Despite the haughty vision, Seinfeld admitted he actually “never called” the actor. Kimmel went on to remind his guest that Day-Lewis is famously retired — his last film was Phantom Thread in 2017.
“If there’s anything to come out of retirement for, it’s a Pop-Tart movie,” Seinfeld said. “It would have been great.”
Through laughter, Kimmel suggested the British actor might be “disappointed” to have not received the invitation, to which Seinfeld said: “I hope so.”
Unfrosted is a fictional origin story of Pop-Tarts, a breakfast snack that Seinfeld famously loves. The story follows a race between breakfast rivals Kellogg’s and Post to create a pastry for the masses in 1963 and stars an ensemble of A-list comedians including Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan and Amy Schumer.
“This really did happen in Battle Creek, Michigan, where Kellogg’s and Post were located, and they did compete to come up with this product,” Seinfeld has said. “But the rest of it is complete lunacy. … We’re going to tell you a story, but if we want to do something funny that doesn’t make any sense, we’re going to do that too.”
The film hits Netflix on Friday.
