Another Beloved Christmas Movie Is Now on Disney+

Another beloved Christmas movie is coming to Disney+: Jingle All the Way! The 1996 film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in a comedic role opposite comedian Sinbad; they play a pair of fathers locked in a desperate Christmas Eve race to get their hands on “Turbo-Man,” the most popular toy of the year, which is in woefully short supply. The story (by Randy Kornfield and Home Alone director Chris Columbus) is a spot-on portrait of how consumer culture has been devouring Christmas for years – and why it is so important to sometimes step back and remember what the true spirit of the holiday is all about. 

Jingle All the Way was considered a flop when it came out in the ’90s. It opened #4 at the box office (behind Star Trek: First Contact, Space Jam, and Mel Gibson’s Ransom), and only earned a total of $129.8 million on a budget of $75 million.

Worse yet, the film turned out to be a major headache for 20th Century Fox, as Jingle All the Way ended up getting the studio mired in a 1998 lawsuit with Murray Hill Publishing. The publisher claimed that the script for Jingle All the Way was stolen from a screenplay they had purchased for a film called Could This Be Christmas?, which was shopped around to Fox and other studios in 1994, and allegedly copied by Kornfield, who worked as a script reader at Fox at the time. 20th Century Fox lost the first round of the case in 2001 and was on the hook for $19 million, until the case was ultimately thrown out on appeal, with a judge declaring the story for Jingle All the Way had been shopped to Fox first. 

However, as is the case with movies, Jingle All the Way has grown beyond the stumbles of its initial release to become a bonafide cult classic for the holiday season. The film endures largely because the reality of parents doing comedically outrageous things to get their hands on popular consumer goods has only gotten stranger than fiction in the last decade, with Black Friday only a few years away from being a full-on gladiatorial event…  

Jingle All the Way (and its sequel) are now streaming on Disney+. You can read the synopses for both, below: 

Jingle All The Way

After promising his young son that Santa will get him the number one item on the boy’s wish list, a well-meaning workaholic father’s Christmas Eve turns into a hilariously nightmarish, madcap scramble across the city to find the much sought-after and therefore virtually impossible-to-find toy.  The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad and Jake Lloyd.

Jingle All The Way 2

Larry’s daughter wants only one thing for Christmas – a talking bear. His daughter’s step-dad intends to make sure that Larry can’t get one. The film stars Larry the Cable Guy and WWE’s Santino Marella.