Bad Santa 2 trailer is shockingly filthy

WITH everyone’s favourite foul mouthed Santa returning to our screens, here are some things you might not know about the original Bad Santa.

IT’S been 13 years since the original Bad Santa hit cinemas, and Billy Bob Thornton’s finally donning the beard and red suit again to play foul-mouthed thief Willie T. Stoke.

The first official trailer for the long-awaited sequel to the 2003 black comedy hit has arrived, and it’s just as filthy as you’d expect.

To mark this first look at the sequel, which will hit cinemas in November, here are some things you might not know about the original Bad Santa:

Bad Santa fans rejoice — Billy Bob’s back for another bite this Christmas.

Casting: It’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job of playing Willie than Billy Bob Thornton. But according to director Terry Zwigoff, he wasn’t the first choice.

“When Bob Weinstein called me and said who do you want to star in this, I said, I think Bill Murray might be good,” said Zwigoff to The New York Times.

“But I was told, ‘Well, Bill Murray will never read your script. It will take him a year to get back to you’. Actually, they heard back from him in a week saying that he wanted to do it, just tell him the time and place and he’d show up. Then he did this thing of disappearing.

“It got to the point where I left a couple of messages saying, ‘If you want to do this thing, great, and if you don’t just let me know, because I have to move on’. But he just disappeared. I can’t blame him ... Then I met Billy Bob, and he was very quick, very smart, very funny.”

Miracle on 34th Street it ain’t.

The kid: The role of Thurman Merman was of course played by Brett Kelly, who beat out another well known child actor for the part.

Angus T Jones, who went on to star as Jake Harper in Two and a Half Men, was one of the final five contenders for the role.

You’ve got to feel for poor Angus don’t you? He missed out on starring alongside a drunk, foul-mouthed abusive womaniser ... oh, wait a minute ...

Bad words: “F***” is said 159 times in the movie and “s***” can be heard on 73 occasions. “There’s a lot of profanity,” acknowledged Zwigoff, “But I thought the profanity was written very poetically”.

Gruesome death: Like every movie, several scenes were left on the Bad Santa cutting room floor, which is a shame because this one sounds like a corker.

“I wrote this scene where Bernie Mac gets killed,” said Zwigoff.

“In the movie that you saw he gets killed pretty quickly and you’re not sure he’s dead, probably. But in my scene, you’re very sure he’s dead.

“It takes about four minutes. I was kind of inspired by The Godfather. I originally had this whole crazy scene where they eventually run over his head. It was a pretty funny scene, I thought.”

2004 : Actors Billy Bob Thornton (L) & Bernie Mac in 2004 film "Bad Santa". Mac/Actor Thornton/Actor

Casting fight: The Coen brothers, who were executive producers on the film, weren’t happy with one of the casting decisions.

“We had a very strong disagreement about casting Tony Cox as the black elf,” said the director, Terry Zwigoff.

“They said that they couldn’t see the guy being black. I said I don’t see the guy being black, I think the fact of him being three-foot-six is the overriding characteristic of the guy. I don’t think it matters. I just think this guy is really funny in the part. And they thought that would ruin the film. They argued with me for a while and finally said, ‘You’re the one who has to direct it, so good luck’.”

Where’s the kid now: Brett Kelly was just eight years old when Bad Santa started filming. He’s now a university graduate who likes to dabble in stand-up comedy.

“It went surprisingly well,” said Kelly in 2014 about his first attempt.

“It was the first time so I was kind of freaking out. I did a whole bit on the MTV movie awards, and how it’s just a big sham. I’ve been writing more stuff, but I’ve been kind of tentative to get into it.”