Christmas is coming early for Matt Rife fans.
The superstar comedian has teamed with Netflix for a surprise holiday special, Matt Rife: Unwrapped — A Christmas Crowd Work Special, set to debut across the globe on Dec. 2. With Unwrapped, Rife “explores gifts, traditions and who’s made it on the naughty or nice list this year,” per the streamer. Directed by good friend and fellow comedian Erik Griffin, the special was taped in Phoenix, Arizona. Rife also executive produced along with Christina Shams. His company, Carpe Noctem, produced the special along with Avesta Entertainment and Above Average.
Third time’s a charm for Rife, too, as it marks three straight for Netflix following Matt Rife: Natural Selection and Matt Rife: Lucid — A Crowd Work Special. The former, released Nov. 15, 2023, landed in the Top 10 in 42 countries, hit the top spot in the United States, Canada and South Africa and became the most viewed Netflix special for the latter half of 2023. After it debuted, Rife stayed in the Netflix fold by signing a deal for two specials and a development deal for a series to write and star in. He made good on the specials pact with Lucid, which debuted Aug. 13, 2024, and hit the global Top 10 again for two weeks.
News of the special comes as Rife is currently in the midst of an ongoing global tour, Matt Rife: Stay Golden, with dates this weekend in Michigan. He’s been continually selling out as he criss-crosses the states and international locations. He sold out two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden and set sales records for Columbus’ Nationwide Arena and various arenas across North America including Seattle, Manchester, Anaheim, Calif. and more.
His other specials include the self-produced and distributed Only Fans, Matthew Steven Rife, Walking Red Flag, all of which helped propel him to this sort of homegrown superstar status. Rife has recently branched out from the stand-up stage to other forms of entertainment. He released a New York Times bestseller last year, Your Mom’s Gonna Love Me. The Simon & Schuster memoir trackes his journey to become an in-demand comedian before the age of 30 with musings on depression, failure, success and family.
On the acting front, he’s got a full slate. He is set to star opposite Owen Wilson in Jeremy Garelick’s Rolling Loud for Live Nation and American High. He also snagged a role in the eight episode limited series The Altruists (starring Anthony Boyle and Julia Garner) from Graham Moore and Jacqueline Hoyt about the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
For Wedding Crashers helmer David Dobkin, he’ll topline The Escort, and will star, co-write and produce The Chasm, a feature mockumentary comedy with Skydance Sports that follows an overconfident climber who chooses to proceed solo on a historic and potentially fatal rock climb. It was announced that he was set to star opposite Emma Roberts in Marriage Material for Trish Sie. His other credits include Netflix’s comedy series Mo opposite Mo Amer and Private Eye.