Warning: minor SPOILERS for The Studio are ahead!
If you’re like me and have been streaming The Studio with an Apple TV+ subscription over the last several weeks, you know that the first episode of Seth Rogen’s critically-acclaimed new series revolves around the title company putting together a movie about an advertising icon. Rogen’s Matt Remick agrees to greenlight a movie about the Kool-Aid Man in exchange for becoming the new head of Continental Studios, and that leads to… well, more on that later. The point being, the real life news about a Hershey’s Chocolate movie being made gives off similar vibes, and Apple hilariously channeled The Studio reacting to it.
First off, before anyone gets riled up, this movie, aptly titled Hershey, will chronicle the story of how the chocolate company was founded rather than deliver a Jungle Cruise-style adventure where characters travel down a chocolate river or anything along those lines. Nevertheless, the Apple TV X account decided to break out Kathryn Hahn’s Maya Mason to comment on the news.
As Continental Studios’ head of marketing, I have no doubt she could sell Hershey no problem. Hell, she came up with a pitch video for the Kool-Aid Man movie on The Studio without there even being a plot, and Bryan Cranston’s Griffin Mill ate it up. Also, a movie about the Hershey company being started is a lot more palatable than when Matt Remick tried to pivot the Kool-Aid movie into a Martin Scorsese-directed feature about the Jonestown deaths.
Regarding what we can expect from Hershey, Variety reports that the movie will star Finn Wittrock and Alexandra Daddario as Milton and Kitty Hershey, with Milton having founded The Hershey Company in 1894. Together, the couple founded the Hershey Industrial School in 1909, which gave free education and housing to orphans and underprivileged children. Then in 1925, 20 years before he died, Milton transferred the majority of his fortune into the Milton Hershey School Trust. He and Kitty were also able to build theaters, recreations and public transportation for their workers in the town that was built around their chocolate factory.
Mean Girls and Freaky Friday’s Mark Waters will direct Hershey, and filming is expected to begin in May. The movie doesn’t have a distributor yet, but the plan is to release it in 2026. Here’s what Waters had to say in an official statement:
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. 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. I’m excited to have Finn Wittrock and Alexandra Daddario to portray these two visionaries, who believed in leaving the world a better place than they found it — the kind of wonderful, true story that audiences are hungry for right now.
We’ll have to wait and see how Hershey does with audiences come next year, but for now, I’m just glad that whoever’s running the Apple TV X account broke out that shot from The Studio to chime in on the announcement. Catch new episodes of the Seth Rogen-led series Wednesdays on the 2025 TV schedule.
