‘The Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler’ announced

Thanks to crowd-sourced financing, there will be a sequel to the 2003 cult hit “The Hebrew Hammer.” Adam Goldberg will return as the titular Shaft-like private eye, with Judy Greer reprising her role as now-wife Esther Bloomenbergensteinenthal. The plot of the sequel involves their traveling back in time, teaming up with Jesus, and fighting Hitler. Thus, “The Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler.”

The first film dealt with The Hebrew Hammer, nom de guerre of Mordechai Jefferson Carver, dealing with a plot by an evil, anti-Semitic Santa Claus (Andy Dick) to destroy Hanukah, the least insidious aspect of which was distributing copies of “It's A Wonderful Life” to young Jewish children. For the sequel, Goldberg and writer-director Jonathan Kesselman sought to shake up the formula. Goldberg told The Hollywood Reporter, “It didn’t seem the sort of franchise where you wouldn’t want to see [the hero] take on one Jewish holiday after another....You want to see him go after the big one. Who’s the Jewish Joker? Hitler. It’s implicit that if we are going to take on Hitler, there’s a time-travel element, so once that widened the scope infinitely, I thought it was important that we hook up with the other big Jew in history: Jesus.” Goldberg went on to say that although—obviously—the film is a comedy its intent is to shake up cultural stereotypes and challenge what he feels is the commonly held view of Jews as “cute and cuddly,” adding: “[P]eople feel like they can take the piss out of other Jews because there is a built-in sort of self-loathing or self-effacement at best I think Jewish people feel, and they can say things like ‘nice Jewish boy’ without it seeming derisive, but I happen to find those things derisive.”

“The Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler” will begin filming in the spring. The release date is as yet unknown.