Over the past couple of years, Netflix has been encroaching on the Hallmark Channel’s holiday season chokehold. Writer Russell Hainline is no stranger to the Christmas movie, having penned several titles for Hallmark, including and . This week he debuted his first Netflix entry, the delightfully named, .
The movie stars Hallmark company player as Kathy, a widow and beloved local who wraps a magical scarf around a sculpted snowman with an eight-pack who becomes a real — and very naked — man named Jack. Hijinks ensue with naive and preternaturally good-natured Jack (Dustin Milligan) being ogled by the local women and helping plan the high school’s winter formal, all the while being pursued by the cops for the initial display of public indecency. The film has earned an overwhelmingly positive critical response and is currently sitting at Netflix’s No.
1 most-streamed movie in the U.S. Ahead of the release of , talked to Hainline about coming up with , the joke that didn’t make the final cut and keeping cynicism out of the holidays: “Irony is a safety net.
These movies should exist without that safety net.” Sometimes you like to, as a writer, come up with pitches that make your friends laugh, that make you laugh, that you never think will actually come to fruition. One of the ones that always got a laugh was: What if Frosty the Snowman came to life and, instead of a snowman, he was a super hot dude? Everyone I told would almost always reply: Yeah, that should be a.
