Fulfilling his wish that it was still the 1990s in the most literal way yet, Adam Sandler’s next Netflix movie will find him once again slipping into the baggy cargo short of decades, playing a ’90s-era talent manager in the just-announced Sandy Wexler. According to a press release, the third stage of Netflix’s rapidly advancing Adam Sandler condition will find him starring alongside Jennifer Hudson, who will play the aspiring singer and assenting love interest to Sandler’s struggling title character. Director Steve Brill—the man behind Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds, and Sandler’s most recent Netflix dropping The Do-Over—completes this blessed union of contractual circumstance.
Sandler’s character reportedly “diligently represents a group of eccentric clients on the fringes of show business” (a description that could just as easily be applied to Sandler himself), though that diligence is soon tested after he discovers Hudson’s Courtney Clarke at an amusement park and finds himself falling for her. For Hudson, the film is another chance for the American Idol finalist to show off her singing and acting talents, which she’s done in roles as varied as Dreamgirls, Chi-Raq, and The Three Stooges. For Sandler, as USA Today notes, it’s a chance to prove that—as with Salma Hayek in Grown Ups—he is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to casting his disproportionately beautiful female leads. And it’s a move toward diversity he still sorely needs, after his previous Netflix outing The Ridiculous 6 offended Native Americans on its way to offending most Americans.
But mostly, Sandy Wexler is a chance for Sandler to return to the formula of nostalgia plus music plus romantic comedy that made The Wedding Singer one of his last genuine successes—and, let’s be honest, most likely squander it. Still, the fact that Adam Sandler is making a movie set in the 1990s has to be welcome news for Vanilla Ice, at least.