Jennifer Garner to star in movie about $17M fruitcake fraud by Fort Worth film group

The story of a North Texas couple, who embezzled nearly $17 million from a fruitcake company, is getting a film adaption thanks to actress Jennifer Garner and a Fort Worth company.

Deadline revealed last week that Garner and Paul Walter Hauser joined “Fruitcake,” a movie about the embezzlement case that rocked Corsicana-based Collin Street Bakery. It is a sordid tale of greed and broken trust that ultimately leads to a nest of diamonds, expensive cars and trips to exotic resorts on private jets.

Hauser is set to play the bakery’s accountant Sandy Jenkins, who embezzled $16.6 million out of the company from 2004 to 2013. Garner will play Jenkins’ wife, Kay.

In 2015, Sandy Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in prison and died four years later at a Fort Worth federal prison hospital. Kay Jenkins was sentenced to five years probation and to complete 100 hours of community service.

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Max Winkler is directing the film that’s based off the Texas Monthly article “Just Deserts.” Trey Selman wrote the script and is a producer on the movie, along with Fort Worth native Red Sanders.

Sanders, who owns and operates local video production company Red Productions, said he’s particularly familiar with the bakery story.

“They pitched the story and I was like, ‘I love that story, I know it well’,” Sanders told the Star-Telegram. “My cousin owns the fruitcake bakery that it happened too and they’re like, ‘Yeah right’.”

‘I’m stubborn’: How a producer stayed on the scent of a story he loves

Sanders first caught wind of the bakery film adaption at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017, which he attended as a producer for the movie “One Percent More Humid.”

It was there where Sanders met Winkler, who’s first movie, “Flower,” also premiered at the festival. After reading Selman’s “Fruitcake” script on the flight back to Texas, and having met Winkler, Sanders was all in on the the project.

In May 2019, it was announced that Will Ferrell and Laura Dern had been cast in the project as Sandy and Kay Jenkins. By February 2020, the rest of the cast was formalized.

But it would be all for naught, as the world shut down just weeks later as reports of COVID-19 infections spread and a pall hung across the globe from an enigmatic pandemic.

“We were planning to shoot in summer 2020 and that got totally derailed,” Sanders said.

With the first iteration of the fruitcake story on ice, the tale found new life as a documentary.

Sanders began working with director Celia Aniskovich on a television project titled “Fruitcake Fraud,” which landed on Discovery+ in 2021. While a success for the streamer, Sanders held on to ambitions of giving the story the full big screen treatment.

Things picked up steam last summer when Texas Monthly came aboard, but again, a few weeks later the project hit another brick wall. Both the Writer’s Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) took to the picket lines, pushing the project’s timeline back even more.

After both strikes ended towards the end of last year, work picked up again on “Fruitcake.” This time Garner and Hauser had joined the cast.

“It’s been one of these things of like, ‘Okay, I’m a producer and I’m stubborn. I love this story, I love Trey’s writing in it’,” Sanders said. “This has to be made.”

‘Fruitcake’ is vying to film in North Texas

The “Fruitcake” story is firmly set in North Texas and Sanders said they hope to shoot the movie in the same place.

With Garner and Hauser on board, the next step in the filmmaking process is finalizing the rest of the cast and applying for production incentives. Like many states, Texas offers tax incentives such as cash grants for productions that film in state.

After being approved for incentives, the project would move into pre-production and eventually begin shooting.

“Just because you say you’re gonna film in Texas doesn’t mean that you’re approved for incentives,” Sanders said. “We gotta see if we’re actually approved.”

If the production does end up shooting in North Texas, Sanders said they’ll aim to hire workers from the area. A boon for two local entities, the Fort Worth Film Commission and Tarrant County College, who had partnered on a new training program last fall. Their mission: Grow film-related jobs in the region. Students can gain certifications in construction, lighting and electric work.

For anyone looking to work on productions filming in North Texas, whether that be on “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan’s numerous shows such as “Landman,” or on “Fruitcake,” Sanders said enrolling in the program is the way to go.

“If we are to shoot here, we’ve got to make sure that the workforce continues to grow here,” Sanders said.