Hershey's Chocolate Is Getting Its Own Movie By The Mean Girls Director - Here's What It's About

The past decade of food movies has seen a trend towards brand-name stories like "The Founder" or "Flamin' Hot," and now, the newest Hollywood production is taking on one of the biggest names in American sweets: Hershey's. According to Variety, the production, which currently carries the straightforward name "Hershey," will be a biopic covering the real life story of founder Milton Hershey and his wife Catherine, played by Finn Wittrock and Alexandra Daddario. The movie will be directed by Mark Waters, who is best known for directing the 2004 "Mean Girls," "Freaky Friday," and the Netflix film "Mother of the Bride." The movie is set to begin filming on location in Hershey's home state of Pennsylvania and is currently scheduled for a 2026 release.

While Hershey's is obviously best known for its chocolate bars and products like Hershey's Kisses, the movie is less about the founding of the company than what came afterwards. The centerpiece of the story will be the relationship between Milton and Catherine and how it inspired the couple to found the Milton Hershey School, which provided free education to underprivileged children or the era and which still endures to this day as one of the largest education trusts in the country. Waters told Variety that the story was inspired by the idea of 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."

The Hershey Industrial School the movie will focus on was founded by the couple in 1909, less than ten years after Milton Hershey had sold his first chocolate bar. He had previously been the founder of two other failed candy companies and had met Catherine at a candy shop while delivering caramels, which had been the focus of his second company. He eventually founded the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania around the company factory in the former town of Derry, where Hershey's built public works like recreation centers and public transportation. The Milton Hershey School still exists in Hershey today, and provides free private education to thousands of students from around the country.

Playing Milton, Finn Wittrock is best known from his roles in multiple seasons of "American Horror Story" and movies like "The Big Short" and "La La Land." Alexandra Daddario, who will play Catherine, most recently starred in the TV series "Mayfair Witches" and the breakout first season of the HBO series "The White Lotus." And while the education-focused nature of the story won't be all about food, maybe we will at least get to the see spark that led to the creation of the first Hershey's Kisses around the same time the movie takes place.