'Hot Frosty' writers consider keeping satire out of holiday titles and movies

Times of discover News: Writer Russell Hainline is no stranger to Christmas movies, having written several titles for Hallmark including The Santa Summit and In My Measuring Room. This week he premieres his first entry on Netflix, the delightfully titled Hot Frosty. The film stars Hallmark star Lacey Chabert as Kathy, a widowed and lovely local woman who wraps a magical scarf around an eight-pack snowman who turns out to be a very naked man named Jack in real life - he becomes a man.

Hijinks result as the naïve and unnaturally good-natured Jack (Dustin Milligan) stalks local women and helps plan the high school winter formal, all while being pursued by the police for an early display of public indecency. The film received an extremely positive critical response and is currently No. 1 on the Netflix list. Us. 1 most streamed movie in the U.S.

Prior to Hot Frosty’s release, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Hainline about coming up with Hot Frosty, a joke that didn’t make the final cut and kept skeptics away from parties: “Irony is a safety net. These movies have to exist without that safety net. Sometimes, as a writer, you like to make pitches that get your friends excited, make you laugh, that you never thought would work. One of them that always makes me laugh is: What if Frosty the Snowman came to life and, instead of being a snowman, was a super hot guy?

Anyone I ask almost always answers: Yes, this should be a movie. So, I thought about pitching it, but I was afraid that if I pitched it, throughout the whole process, it would turn into some more milquetoast. I wanted it to be fun, so that my snowman didn't immediately become some fictional person, but had the naivety and innocence of someone who was born yesterday.

I wanted it to be a little bit sensual, just a little bit sexual. He came into the world naked, like we all do. So, I wrote a specific [script]. I completely assumed that I was just doing this for myself, doing something that you know I love and nobody else really wants to do. I wrote it during the pandemic, when my anxiety was at its peak, and writing something like that brought me some joy. And here we are years later. Yeah, and obviously, here we are years later.