Need to Sell a Film or TV Show? Just Add Christmas
Reps and filmmakers explain how a Yuletide twist can turn any story into a greenlight right now — and what Netflix has to do with it
I cover top dealmakers for paid subscribers. I wrote about the new foreign presales playbook for indie films and the return of film crowdfunding, analyzed animation’s box office boom, and looked at who’s scoring big feature film deals now.
Earlier this year, in a general conversation about getting movies off the ground in the current climate, a dealmaker said something a bit unexpected: Everyone wants to make Christmas movies because Netflix wants them.
I immediately added that statement to my yuletide to-do reporting list, not realizing that by the time December rolled around, my curiosity would be squarely aligned with the news cyclone.
Netflix is now offering $82.7 billion for the Warner Bros. film and TV production and streaming businesses of Warner Bros. Discovery, including HBO Max and HBO, while Paramount has made a hostile bid of $108 billion (backed by multiple Gulf sovereign funds, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and, of course, the Ellison family) for the whole company. (Other than some debt financing from banks, including Wells Fargo, BNP, and HSBC, Netflix needs no backing for its bid.)
Warner Bros. is, among other things, the storied studio-slash-distributor behind some of the most iconic holiday movies of the past hundred years — including Christmas in Connecticut, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, The Polar Express and Gremlins — if you count it, which I personally do. (While MGM produced A Christmas Story, it was the annual 24-hour marathons on Warners-owned TNT and TBS that cemented it as a cultural staple.)
Of course, Netflix’s interest in Warners extends beyond Elf — but the acquisition would certainly bolster its push into the Christmas space, which began around 2017. The streamer has been making two to four holiday original films per year since then, as my colleague Lesley Goldberg noted in her column a couple of weeks ago (the streamer is currently promoting 28 Christmas films on its site).
“These bigger, elevated, four-quadrant Christmas movies are selling,” says Verve motion picture lit agent Noah Liebmiller. “There’s also a real appetite, and clearly a real audience, for what 10 or 15 years ago might have been called ‘a Hallmark Christmas movie’ — and the home for those is seen as Netflix.”
Adds another agent with clients in the holiday movie space, “Netflix is the Walmart of our business. They have to have everything on their shelves. They have to sell $200 million blockbusters and they have to sell fun little Christmas movies as well.”
Putting more content and IP on its shelves, in fact, is the major driver of Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros. (Unlike the plot of many of these holiday movies, however, there’s no aw-shucks, flannel-clad boy next door in this late-stage capitalism love triangle. Both corporate suitors are the rich, big city businessman who want to buy grandma’s bakery.)
“All the streamers want to have their quill of holiday films to keep the audience engaged,” says veteran talent lawyer Rick Genow, whose clients include Michael Showalter, the multi-hyphenate helming Amazon MGM Studios’ starry new Christmas dramedy Oh. What. Fun. “The ability to put it in the library and have it be rediscovered every year allows streamers to dedicate more financial resources to these films, so I do think that has changed the nature of these holiday movies.”
For today, I talked with dealmakers and filmmakers including Genow, Liebmiller, UTA partner and co-head of Media Rights Keya Khayatian, veteran talent lawyer and Danny Passman and directors Roger Bobb and Jonah Feingold about the modern market for holiday films.
In this issue, I’ll break down…
How streaming turned Christmas movies from made-for-TV filler into prestige-adjacent assets — and why talent no longer flinches
The real budget range for holiday films, from Hallmark-cheap to surprisingly expensive — and why the math still works
Which mid-budget genres lost their slot to Christmas movies as studios chase safer bets
Why economic anxiety actually boosts demand for holiday programming
How Christmas movies mint stars and cultural currency, from A Christmas Story to modern streaming hits
Why December functions as a “free marketing vessel” — and how the calendar puts pressure on viewers to actually watch
How almost any genre — horror, rom-com, even heist movies — becomes sellable once it’s Christmas-coded
Why holiday films are increasingly treated as annual assets, not one-off releases