Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf returns to screens in new Asda Christmas advert

Will Ferrell has reprised his role as Buddy the Elf in this year’s Asda Christmas advert.

As supermarkets and retailers begin rolling out their annual festive advert offerings, people have been shocked to see the Hollywood actor taking a lead role in Asda’s advert, where he appears as Buddy the Elf from the 2003 blockbuster Elf.

In the advert, Buddy is seen taking part in a trial shift at the supermarket in the run-up to Christmas. However, in satirical nods to the original movie, not everything goes to plan.

Buddy can be seen narrowly dodging trolley disasters, helping himself to pigs in blankets and even singing Christmas tunes on the store tannoy system.

Yet despite Buddy decking the supermarket out in hazardous fairly lights, renaming the self-checkout ‘elf-checkout’ and falling into a Christmas tree, he somehow gets the job.

The ad concludes with the message: “Have your Elf a Merry Christmas”.

The advert was shot by multi-award-winning director Danny Kleinman who has designed every title sequence for the James Bond movies since GoldenEye in 1995 – except for Quantum of Solace.

While it has been shared widely on Twitter, it will be making its television debut tonight (Friday November 4th) on ITV at 8:45pm during Coronation Street.

Even before its release on television, the advert has had a very warm reception on social media, with one person writing: “The ASDA Christmas advert is the best ever,might even start shopping there now”. 

Another commented: “I’m sorry but @asda has already won best Christmas advert of the year with buddy the elf, surely it cannot be topped!!”.

A third noted: “Favourite Christmas advert, without even seeing the competition, Buddy trumps everything”.

Also premiering tonight will be Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, which features ITV’s beloved Allison Hammond, and Lidl’s own ad, which will be debuting their very own teddybear character.