How Netflix, Hallmark, others fight for best Christmas movies

Conservative pundits steadily specific concern about “the struggle on Christmas.” However what a couple of struggle for Christmas?

This winter, Hallmark Channel and its sister community, Hallmark Films & Mysteries, are airing 40 new TV motion pictures about Christmas and different occasions that fall within the ultimate month of the 12 months. Throughout the identical interval, Lifetime is unwrapping 34 new releases. In the meantime, sleigh bells are ringing and snow is glistening at OWN, UP, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and YouTube. Even Fox Nation is getting in on the act.

These movies could not obtain the identical acclaim because the Oscar frontrunners, however they’re scores juggernauts that more and more garner greater budgets and larger stars — typically utilizing recognized expertise steadily sufficient that performer and platform develop into synonymous: Assume Holly Robinson Peete, who’s starring in two Hallmark vacation motion pictures this 12 months — together with “The Christmas Physician,” which she government produced — or Melissa Joan Hart, who stars in Lifetime’s “Pricey Christmas” and directed the community’s “Feliz NaviDAD.”

Hannah Pillemer, the chief vice chairman of improvement and manufacturing for MarVista Leisure, says that when she began on the Westwood firm eight years in the past, vacation motion pictures constituted about 10% of the event slate and that the style was nonetheless considered what she calls “the movie ghetto.”

Now, vacation movies account for about 50% of MarVista’s tasks. As extra gamers, some with deeper wallets, enter the area, Pillemer says she’s seen “the urge for food explode for this type of content material.” Her firm has 9 vacation TV motion pictures airing in 2020.

Adrian Holmes and Holly Robinson Peete in “The Christmas Physician.” The soft-focus background peppered with sparkle helps create the feel-good allure of the Christmas film style.

(Hugh Tull / Crown Media)

A big a part of these movies’ success goes into the painstaking advertising and marketing that may be seen on, and off, display.

“When individuals come to look at a Hallmark Christmas film, they’re coming for an expertise … [of] positivity, of optimism, of a promise that after spending two hours with us, you’ll really feel a little bit bit higher about your self and in regards to the world and about your group and your loved ones and pals,” says Michelle Vicary, Hallmark’s government vice chairman of programming. And she or he says that this interprets to tangible objects, too, like Hallmark-branded blankets, socks, candies, wines, popcorn and Monopoly video games.

“The Christmas Physician’s” Peete says that, as an government producer of that movie and different Hallmark tasks, probably the most substantial notes she will get from the community apply to costumes — Is her coat tied the suitable manner? Does the colour scheme match? — and about “ornament and decor and ‘Is there sufficient Christmas within the scene?’” By this, she means “both a tender focus within the background that signifies Christmas [or] a shade sparkle.”

Pillemer says that she’s obtained notes from Hallmark executives on the varieties of plaid shirts that her male characters put on and the way their hair is parted, and that the film’s final kiss scene — which signifies the happily-ever-after on the finish of the journey — have to be shot in a selected manner.

Lifetime, too, has a shade palette it adheres to — together with a shade, utilized in advertising and marketing supplies, named Winter White in honor of Amy Winter, the channel’s head of programming. It additionally has branding tie-ins: This 12 months, the community has partnered with trip rental website Vrbo on a Connecticut rental dwelling adorned to look as if it had popped out of a Christmas film.

“It’s like getting the proper reward. It’s a must to have the suitable wrapping paper on it, proper?” Winter says of the attention for element utilized to Lifetime’s movies. “We simply wish to be sure that individuals completely know what they’re getting out of out of every of the Christmas motion pictures.”

Whereas some channels are extra fastidious than others, Pillemer says that every has its “little enjoyable quirks.” She says Hallmark and Lifetime require that Christmas be a part of the story of their vacation motion pictures — “not simply that there’s lights and bushes within the background, however that you simply even have a personality going via a change that would solely occur at Christmas.” For BET, she says, it’s about “the household coming dwelling for the vacations, being collectively [and] occurring a journey of self-discovery.”

At Netflix, which has the luxurious of a extra relaxed launch schedule, “what we don’t do is attempt to jam all of it in there,” says Tendo Nagenda, one of many streaming large’s vice presidents of movie. He additionally says “we glance holistically … [at] what’s the providing after which what may we carry that’s distinctive. So we’d not have a Christmas title movie subsequent 12 months.”

Fellow vice chairman of movie Ian Bricke says that whereas “these are motion pictures that are supposed to fulfill,” the corporate “additionally desires to present them a little bit elevation — give them a twist or shoot in stunning areas.”

Pushing the style in opposition to conventional stereotypes, Hallmark’s “The Christmas Home,” starring Brad More durable, left, and Jonathan Bennett, is the channel’s first vacation movie to function a homosexual couple.

(Allister Foster / Crown Media)

Because it adheres to those standards, the style can also be pushing again in opposition to the stereotype that each one vacation motion pictures have the identical predictable plot.

“A number of years again, there can be a bakery in each film,” laughs Tanya Lopez, Lifetime’s head of flicks. Now, she says, “I’m actually working to dispel these tropes and people stereotypes that, I feel, had develop into very simple” — although, after all, “the endings are nonetheless going to be glad.”

Networks are additionally pushing to diversify the casts of their vacation slates, in addition to the behind-the-scenes creatives making them. Along with its Dolly Parton musical, “Christmas on the Sq.,” and “The Christmas Chronicles 2,” a sequel to the favored 2018 household movie starring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn as Mr. and Mrs. Claus, Netflix has launched the splashy musical fantasy “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey.” Written and directed by David E. Talbert, it comes with show-stopping dance numbers and encompasses a forged made up predominantly of performers of shade, including Forest Whitaker, Ricky Martin and Keegan-Michael Key. Though it was initially supposed for a theatrical launch, Hulu is airing “Happiest Season,” a LGBTQ-themed story centering on a pair performed by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. It’s directed by Clea DuVall, who wrote the script with the movie’s costar, Mary Holland.

Lifetime has titles like “A Sugar & Spice Vacation,” written by Eirene Donohue and directed by Jennifer Liao, which follows a Chinese language American girl (Jacky Lai) who attracts on her household’s cultural traditions to boost a cooking competitors. There’s additionally the MarVista-produced “The Christmas Setup,” Lifetime’s first LGBTQ-led unique vacation movie. Helmed by out director Pat Mills, it stars real-life married couple Ben Lewis and Blake Lee as characters pushed collectively by one’s needling mom (performed by Fran Drescher). Hallmark’s “The Christmas Home” is the channel’s first holiday film to feature a gay couple (performed by Jonathan Bennett and Brad More durable).

“I discover with these Christmas motion pictures that there’s a really distinctive structure to the film, to the storytelling,” says Michael J. Murray, the out screenwriter for “The Christmas Setup” and a bunch of different vacation movies. “It’s like a haiku. You’ll be able to play with the phrases, however on the finish of the day, you’ve received to stick to the construction and the shape.”

And but, regardless of the deal with Christmas, these motion pictures are normally not overtly non secular.

“I feel one of the best of the Christmas motion pictures are nondenominational,” Murray says.

He’ll, sometimes, write in characters with a non secular connection, like an Episcopal priest in Lifetime’s 2018 movie “Christmas Across the Nook.” However he mentions “It’s a Great Life,” one of many mainstream motion pictures most synonymous with the vacation, as a result of in that movie “the larger questions are about life and demise and a life effectively spent.”

“Generally, for me, I’d somewhat have these scenes propel my story than the deep and particularly non secular themes,” Murray says.

“Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey” encompasses a forged made up predominantly of performers of shade, together with Madalen Mills and Forest Whitaker.

(Gareth Gatrell / Netflix)

There’s additionally the push-pull of the titles themselves. What number of alternatives are there to make use of “Christmas” as an adjective?

MarVista’s Pillemer requires her staff to have catchy titles once they pitch tasks, “and in the event that they don’t have a superb title, they’ve to return and give it some thought earlier than they bring about it again.” She says they’ll scour books, poems and songs to provide you with unique concepts and construct ideas off of these. She’s significantly happy with a movie that can go into manufacturing subsequent 12 months, “All Is Shiny.” It’s a couple of mild adorning competitors.

This 12 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has additionally affected the battle for seasonal supremacy. Attributable to elements like climate, scheduling and the necessity to ship this many presents to rom-com lovers in time for Christmas, vacation motion pictures had been a few of the first to start out manufacturing after the spring shutdown. Stars like Ali Stroker and Daniel di Tomasso of Lifetime’s “Christmas Ever After” had been fabricating falling in love round Plexiglas. “The Christmas Setup’s” Lee and Lewis had been introduced in, partially, as a result of they had been quarantining collectively. In “Feliz NaviDAD,” reindeer garden decorations seem with masks as a wink to the present predicament. “Pricey Christmas” has solely six talking elements, and the background performers are performed by crew members.

However the pandemic may additionally be a boon to the movies’ viewership.

“These Christmas motion pictures are going to be actually essential this 12 months,” says screenwriter Murray. “They’re going to must be an alternative to many people not having our households round.”