@shadow_priest_x
I suppose I would ask you, as an aspiring filmmaker and active script writer, and someone who wants more Christmas content, what do you have to say about Christmas in movie form that hasn't been said?
If you were commissioned to make a "Christmas movie" and trusted to just do your thing with a cast and crew, would you have something to say, or would you be sitting in front of the typewriter like Jack Nicholson in The Shining trying to think of something worth saying?
I don't know if there are a lot of good or original Christmas scripts floating around that should be getting made but aren't. I personally can't think of anything new about Christmas that isn't already said by the movies that are out there, and probably better said already than they would be if expressed in another remake or reboot.
So if someone is commissioned to have a "Christmas movie" ready for a November release, come hell or high water, are they going to produce something for the ages, or will it end up being just more forgettable, disposable material that isn't making the cut for your list of good Christmas movies.
I think the Hallmark Channel alone pumps out about a dozen made-for-TV Christmas movies a year, and they round up the usual suspects like Shelley Long or Tiffani Amber Thiessen or Candace Cameron or Henry Winkler or Jason Gedrick, but how many A-list actors at the height of their careers or top directors are chomping at the bit to do a Christmas movie? At a minimum, that would take an inspired script, and that comes back to the question...what is left to be said?
Bill Murray and Richard Donner teamed up for Scrooged at the height of their careers, and an updating of A Christmas Carol was a great idea. Murray was the perfect actor for it (there really isn't a counterpart today to 1980s Bill Murray) and it was an inspired adaptation. I'd probably say the best modernized film adaptation of any classic, at least offhand.
But there's nothing new to add there, really. There are only so many ways to skin a cat when it comes to A Christmas Carol. What's left, add selfies and Facebook? And there may only be so many inspired ways to skin a cat when it comes to Christmas movies in general. It's a pretty specific genre, much narrower than "comedy" or "romantic comedy" or "action."
To keep the production line running at a similar pace to those genres, you end up with all of these Hallmark movies that most people probably have never heard of.
Al Pacino tries to singlehandedly revive Shakespeare every five or ten years. And for a while, it seemed like every five years, the best actors in Hollywood came together to remake Hamlet...and nobody really gave a crap.
1990: Mel Gibson, Ian Holm, Glenn Close, etc.
1996: Kenneth Branagh, Julie Christie, Judi Dench, etc.
2000: Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray, Liev Schreiber, etc.
Continuing versions on TV etc... The Shakespeare enthusiasts all check it out and everybody else shrugs. Unless someone is dying to see the intricate differences in how the most familiar lines are delivered by different actors...it's just more Hamlet to most people.
Unless someone has a vision that they want to see through, then chances are what will end up on the screen is "just more Christmas."
You say you want more re-watchable Christmas movies, something you would load up every year or two during the Holidays and revisit, the way people do now with Love Actually and A Christmas Story and Elf...
But what would you like to see... What would you like to say about Christmas, or would it be something that's already been said? Would you just end up pumping out an ultra-formulaic by-the-numbers "Christmas script" or, worse yet, an ultra-cynical Christmasy cash-grab-reboot?
I honestly don't know if I've seen anything more cynical in the last while than the trailer for Office Christmas Party. It's like it was developed by some kind of studio profit maximizing A.I. "Intersperse jokes X, Y, and Z (probably puking, farting and pratfalls) that people like in setting and scenario that matches the current time of year for maximum additional holiday-related revenue. Plug in Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston and at least one of the trending overweight female comedians."
