Last fall, when the world’s most famous pop star and one of the NFL’s most talented players started very publicly dating amid a historic world concert tour and a run to the Super Bowl, it was so improbable, so entertaining, so cinematic that it felt like ...
well ...
“At some point, I said, ‘It just feels so much like a movie,’” said Tia Maggini, senior vice president of programming for Lifetime and a Taylor Swift fan. “And then it was like, wait a minute — we could do that movie. That would be an amazing Christmas movie.
” Maggini’s job put her in the rare position to make that dream a reality, which is how “Christmas in the Spotlight” was born unto us. The film, about a Grammy-winning superstar who unexpectedly falls for a pro football player, premiered Nov. 23, a week before Hallmark Channel’s “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” premiering Saturday.
That movie, centered on a die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan who unexpectedly falls for a staff member of the team’s front office, technically does not mention Swift or Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — but the inspiration of their romance hovers over the project like mistletoe, along with a cameo from Travis’s mom, Donna Kelce. The two films are the natural result of an audience’s obsession with original TV Christmas movies — a genre that has exploded in recent years — as well as a fascination with Swift and Kelce that shows no signs of ending. Executives for both networks have become .
