‘The Big Bang Theory’ season 8: Jim Parsons gets musical for new Christmas gig

Jim Parsons is going to be quite the busy guy to close out the year. Not only will the actor continue to be paid top-dollar for his work on CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory,” but we also know now that he will be lending his voice to something completely different in celebration of the holiday season.

Sources confirm that Parsons is set to voice the title character in the upcoming NBC holiday special “Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas,” which is going to air on Tuesday, December 16. This special is going to have a rather enormous cast to go with with him, and that includes Mark Hamill, Ed Asner, Fred Armisen, Jay Leno, Matt Lauer, Gilbert Gottfried, Kate Micucci, Steve Higgins, Max Charles, and Rachael MacFarlane.

This voice cast alone is somewhat interesting, given that you have a ton of NBC personalities thrown in here, including someone in Lauer who doesn’t have really any history in this sort of thing. (Maybe he’s playing himself?) If nothing else, there are some super-experienced voice actors in this group, in particular MacFarlane and Hamill. Leno has also done his fair share over the years.

The thing that surprises us most about this special, based on the live-action movie, is that they are doing it without Will Ferrell, who was the star of the film. The only real reason we can see for a change is that maybe Parsons is a better singer. We’ll ultimately try to reserve a little bit of judgment here before we actually see the special airs.

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