“Imagine the drunk on sugar-power Kellogg’s cereal culture of the mid-60’s in Battle Creek, MI,” Seinfeld tweeted. “That’s a vibe I could work with.”
Six years later, the trailer for the film was released Thursday, featuring a star-studded ensemble and Seinfeld’s signature lighthearted humor. The film marks the comedian and actor’s directorial debut.
Seinfeld stars alongside Melissa McCarthy and Jim Gaffigan as Kellogg’s executives trying to compete with rival company Post Cereal’s new shelf-stable breakfast pastry, “Country Squares.” Amy Schumer and Max Greenfield work for Post and the camps compete to hit shelves first.
Hugh Grant, Christian Slater, Bill Burr, Daniel Levy, James Marsden, Jack McBrayer, Peter Dinklage and Fred Armisen round out the cast.
“It’s a huge cast. I don’t know how it got so big,” Seinfeld told Netflix‘s Tudum. “I remember that we had nobody for a long time. And then Hugh Grant called and said he heard about the movie, and he wanted to be Tony the Tiger. Then, the next thing I knew, everybody was in it, and it was incredible.”
The trailer likens the pastry race between the companies to the space race, which was happening during the film’s setting in 1963. The opening of the trailer shows a dramatized close-up shot of a Pop-Tart shooting out of a toaster in a style similar to a spacecraft blasting off.
Seinfeld was a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Wednesday, where he said he and his writers drew stylistic inspiration from the historical drama “The Right Stuff.”
“Remember ‘The Right Stuff,’ which is U.S. versus Russia, who could put a man on the moon first? That is how we tell the story of the Pop-Tart,” Seinfeld said. “Who can make the Pop-Tart is the same as who can land on the moon first.”
Seinfeld, who co–wrote the film with his “Bee Movie” and “Seinfeld” collaborators Spike Feresten, Barry Marder and Andy Robin, also said Kellogg’s had “no idea” they were making the movie, and said that while the basis of the story is true, much of the film is “completely insane.”
“We took all their products, we took all their characters. Snap, Crackle and Pop are in the movie. Tony the Tiger is in the movie, Toucan Sam — we took everything. I didn’t know we had to ask.”
“There could be some serious legal exposure,” he continued. “But if I were to be hauled into court on Pop-Tart charges, that would make my life.”
“Unfrosted” will premiere May 3 on Netflix.