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In the new AppleTV+ series The Studio, an entertainment executive played by Seth Rogen tries to grapple with a pitch for a Kool-Aid movie. Like most good satire, it's not straying far from the truth: This time next year will bring the release of a movie about Hershey’s chocolate.
This week, the Hershey Company announced that production is set to begin on Hershey, a biopic about their eponymous founder who lived from 1857 to 1945. The film will star Finn Wittrock (The Big Short) as Milton Hershey and Alexandra Daddario (The White Lotus) as his wife, Catherine. Mark Waters, best known for Mean Girls, will direct.
Hershey’s life was certainly eventful. A kind of benevolent Willy Wonka, Hershey redirected much of his fortune and time to philanthropic efforts. He and Catherine founded the Hershey Industrial School in 1909, which offered education and housing to poor children. Later, the Milton Hershey School Trust used his wealth for educational endowments. The town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, was built to keep his factory employees comfortable.
Hershey also had at least one near-miss that’s likely to be dramatized: He and Catherine were booked to return home from France on the RMS Titanic. Circumstances—history is fuzzy as to the exact reason—prompted them to cancel.
“Against all odds, Milton achieved great success, but unlike a lot of other wealthy men of his time, he shared his success with the working people and community around him,” Mark Waters said in a press release. “The core of Hershey, the movie, will be the special love story between Milton and Catherine Hershey, who inspired his greatest legacy—the creation of Milton Hershey School.”
Audiences indeed have an appetite for movies based on consumer products. Blackberry, which detailed the rise and fall of the tech device, drew critical raves in 2023. It was joined by movies about Air Jordans (Air), Cheetos (Flamin’ Hot), Tetris (Tetris), and Pop-Tarts (Unfrosted) in the 2020s. Hershey does not currently have a distributor or a release date. Filming begins in May.