Is ‘Nutcrackers’ Based on a True Story? Meet the Janson Brothers, the Real Kids From Ben Stiller’s Hulu Movie

The kids in Nutcrackers—a new Ben Stiller Christmas movie that began streaming on Hulu today—display an amazing naturalism rarely seen in child actors. That’s because, in fact, the Nutcrackers kids are not actors. They are the real-life brothers—Atlas, Arlo, Ulysses, and Homer Janson, ages 8 through 13—who inspired director David Gordon Green to make the movie in the first place.

Directed by Green (known for his recent Halloween re-quel movies), with a script by Leland Douglas, Nutcrackers finds Ben Stiller in a role we’ve seen him in before, though not in quite some time: the uppity, curmudgeonly workaholic who is dropped in the middle of a chaotic situation. In this case, the chaotic situation is the sudden death of his sister and her husband. Mike (Stiller) is forced to leave his fancy real estate job in Chicago to care for his sister’s four rambunctious boys, while the state searches for a foster home. He’s still hoping to close the deal of a lifetime while working remotely, but, unfortunately, the rural farmhouse where his sister lived does not get cell reception or Wi-Fi.

In fact, that rural farmhouse is the Janson brothers’ real home in Ohio, and their mother is a friend of David Gordon Green’s, Karey Williams. Read on to learn more about the Janson kids and the Nutcrackers movie true story.

Is the Ben Stiller movie Nutcrackers based on a true story?

Nutcrackers is based on a true story in the sense that the kids in Nutcrackers are not actors, and were more or less being themselves on screen. They are the kids of a friend of David Gordon Green’s, and it was their real-life dynamic that inspired Green to make the movie in the first place.

In an interview with IndieWire, Green explained that he first met the Janson kids when he was out in rural Ohio to film a cameo for Luca Guadagnino’s film, Bones and All.

“One of my college friends, Karey [Williams], lives out there and I hadn’t been to her farm since college. She was one of the second unit DPs on [Green’s first feature] George Washington, and she left the movie business to go have a family and be a farmer,” Green explained. “When I’m out there on Luca’s movie, I go visit her and immediately meet her kids. They are these four amazing and lovely sons. Their home and animals are all incredible and inspiring. I walked away from that weekend thinking, I just acted in a movie that’s crazy, and I just met the subjects of a movie I’m going to make.”

Green had his friend Leland Douglas write a script catered to the four brothers. They filmed at the family’s real home in Wilmington, Ohio—in the southern part of the state, outside Cincinnati—in late 2023 and early 2024. Their real animals were featured in the film, and the movie is dedicated to the brothers’ late dog, who briefly appears on screen.

“In the last six months, you’ve thought, this guy should be in a movie,” Green said in that same IndieWire interview. “Or this place is beautiful, why hasn’t anyone made a movie here? These types of things, at this point in my career, I like to be just like, yeah, they should be in a movie. And I can make that happen. And we should shoot in on their farm, with their animals, and go to their ballet school, and cast their friends, and then invite a movie star and see if we can’t convince someone to come in here and headline it. “

That movie star, of course, was Ben Stiller, who Green says he pitched the movie to by telling him: “Hey, Ben. We’ve got these four non-actor brothers. Come out here. It’s cold as hell and you’re going to step in animal shit. But if we can get a camera to capture what is so magnetic about the personalities of these four brothers, I think we’re on to something really special.”

All this said, Nutcrackers is not based on a true story in the sense that while the boys and their personalities are all very real, the plot is entirely made up. They are not orphans in danger of being put in foster care. Their mom is very much alive and well.

But the kids’ talent for dance is real. All four are trained in ballet. The oldest, Homer, told Time magazine that he’s been taking ballet lessons for seven years. And the “way better” version of the Nutcracker ballet, aka The Nutcracker’s Mustache, that the kids put on in the movie’s climax really was (mostly) written by one of the kids. Time reports that Green asked Ulysses Janson, the middle child who is 10, to share what his version of the ballet would be, and used that.

Even though the boys aren’t trained actors, they still faced the same challenges that professionals face—like laughing during takes. In an interview with Screen Rant, Ulysses said that the biggest challenge for the brothers was keeping a straight face.

“We had a hard time not laughing at all, because we would be like standing there, and then we would be watching it,” Ulysses said. “One part of the movie, I’m rubbing lipstick, and we had to do five shots because my brother, Homer was laughing every single take. He was like, ‘Leave the room.’”

In that same interview with Screen Rant, actor Linda Cardellini—who plays the boys’ social worker—noted that while you only see the boys in the film, their entire family was involved in the production.

“When you were there on set, it really felt like a family,” Cardellini said. “It was people who really wanted to be there, doing work together, even so much so that, even their mom was there with them, of course, and their dad, but also their grandmother was there.”

Nutcrackers is now streaming on Hulu in the U.S., and on Disney+ in select non-U.S. territories.