The Santa Summit: How Writer Russell Hainline Flipped the Script to Deliver One Hallmark’s Best Christmas Movies

There’s something in the water over at the Hallmark Channel. We’ve all seen the memes about Hallmark’s Christmas rom-coms over the years, tearing apart the network’s feel-good holiday fare that has largely recycled the same stories and material for decades. Recently, however, there has been a shift, and Hallmark’s annual has seen more and more movies breaking from what we’ve come to expect, pouring tons of effort into crafting new stories that appeal to a much wider potential audience. Nearly every week of the 2023 Countdown to Christmas has seen Hallmark try something completely new, but there’s one film in particular that has seemed to signal the arrival of a new era for the network.

The movie in question is called The Santa Summit. Directed by Hallmark mainstay Jeff Beesley, The Santa Summit tells the story of three best friends in their 30s on a wild adventure of love and self-discovery. For those who think every Hallmark movie is about a successful woman leaving the city to spend Christmas in her small hometown and finding love with a handsome, blue-collar man who convinces her to drop everything she has going for her, The Santa Summit is a total jolt to the system. 

This film has great performances, confident direction, some remarkably fantastic production design, and more extras than I’ve ever seen in a Hallmark movie before. But the real star of The Santa Summit is the story itself. This is a movie that breaks so many Hallmark cliches and traditions, actively speaking to a younger audience and putting interesting, human characters at the forefront. 

It’s a movie that appeals just as much to outsiders as it does longtime Hallmark viewers — earning plenty of rave reviews from both — and it took one of those outsiders to bring something this unique to the network. Enter Russell Hainline, a screenwriter who spent years working in horror, thriller, and genre spaces before making the leap to the Hallmark Channel in 2022. Coming into Hallmark as a clean slate with fresh ideas, Hainline simply wrote the kind of stories he’d always wanted to see on TV, but he wound up helping the network reinvent its own wheel without even knowing it.

ComicBook.com recently spoke to Hainline about his work on The Santa Summit, as well as the surprising pivot to TV Christmas movies that reinvigorated his writing career.  It all started with the simple decision to bring more joy into his traditionally dark screenplays.

“I think that we all struggle, and the last few years in particular have just been so hard for everyone. Reality just totally seems like a hellscape,” Hainline told us. “You read the news and when you talk to people about what’s going on in the world, and I was doing horror/thriller scripts and it did not seem as fun to come up with creative ways of murdering people anymore. And I still enjoy a good horror movie. I love genre stuff, action, monster movies. It’s what I grew up on. I never really anticipated making this pivot, but I’ve really loved getting to work on it. And the people I’ve worked with have been so great and so talented, and I never failed to be impressed by all of the people who help make what I’m trying to make into something that is as good as it ends up being. I’ve been very fortunate.”

Hainline’s first Hallmark movie, In Merry Measure, premiered on the network last November, and he used movie-centric social media service Letterboxd to write a “review” of that film that explained why he wrote it.

“I really enjoyed it, writing movies where people are nice to one another, where good things happen to those who deserve it — it felt like writing science fiction without the spaceships,” Hainline detailed in the post. “But it was exactly what my anxiety needed. And I developed a newfound appreciation for the role these movies play in the lives of others — it genuinely helped me cope during a time when the world seemed especially horrible.”

On a personal level, I’ve been experiencing a lot of the same things that Hainline described over the last couple of years. I found myself in a similar place and, this year, I turned to the idea of Hallmark Christmas movies as a way to simply watch something that didn’t make things feel even worse. That’s how I found The Santa Summit, a film that I never would have given a chance not too long ago, simply because of the network that produced it. From its opening minutes, however, I was hooked, and The Santa Summit became my gateway into the world of Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas. 

Crafting Something New to Hallmark

The Santa Summit is such a departure from what we have all known Hallmark movies to be, and that was something Hainline knew as soon as he started writing it. The expectation was that he would aim for the fences, write the movie exactly the way he wanted regardless of how “Hallmark” it felt, knowing there would be lots of notes. Hopefully, at least some of the new and exciting ideas would stick. Then the unexpected happened — the network loved everything about it.

There are a couple of love stories in The Santa Summit, but its core is about three close friends and their journey to figure themselves out. It’s also a film that takes place entirely in one night, set in the middle of a Santa convention where hordes of strangers are hopping between bars dressed as Old Saint Nick. There’s a reindeer-clad rickshaw driver offering profound life advice and a mysterious figure in a blow-up Christmas tree outfit appearing in the most hilarious ways throughout the film. It’s a strange movie that has more in common with The Hangover (albeit with a G-rating) than many of Hallmark’s previous films.

According to Hainline, the network was instantly supportive of his vision for the story and actively encouraged his biggest, zaniest ideas.

“Right from the beginning, we knew what we wanted this to be. We wanted it to be a one crazy night movie. We wanted it to be a younger movie. We wanted it to be a little more chaotic, controlled chaos, but certainly something more chaotic than maybe people would expect,” Hainline explained. “And when I pitched what I wanted to do with this, I very much wanted it to be about a group of friends first and foremost. And they’ve done a couple of movies that I’ve seen recently that have done that, so I felt there was a world in which they would be receptive to it, and not only were they receptive to it, they were eager. I think you can see from this year’s slate how interesting these movies are compared to what some of the easy and antiquated jokes are about what these movies all are. 

“There are familiar themes within them. There are familiar images in a lot of them, and certainly Santa Summit has some of those as well. I think there’s comfort. But I wanted to make a movie about friends, about friends who were going through something, things that I went through, things that I think a lot of people in that age range go through. I was very much hoping that the audience that is in that age range or had recently been in that age range would respond as strongly to it as the people who were working on the movie with me were responding to it as we were making it. And the response has been very overwhelming. You never know whether people will like something as much as you like it.”

People have liked it. New fans like me have engaged with The Santa Summit for telling a story that we can actually connect to. Die hard Hallmark viewers have connected to it because it delivers the kind of inspiring holiday cheer they’ve come to expect. 

“Even people who love Hallmark movies, and there are so many and they’re wonderful. They’ve all been very nice,” he continued. “But again, we knew this was not your typical girl meets boy or girl re-encounters love story. It was going to be different. You never know how they’ll respond to that. But I think the audience, even the core audience, really likes seeing things that are a little different, that take the familiar and the comfortable and find a way of putting a twist on it. There are so many movies out there, there’s so much TV out there, there’s just a glut of content in this world, and if you just keep making the same thing over and over again, audiences, even the audiences who love it, will get tired. We’ve seen that with a number of marquee franchises and big names over the years.

“I think finding that way to deliver the goods to your fan base while also branching out enough that it invites in new audiences, that it delivers an expansion of the things that they enjoy and also just hopefully, most importantly in the entirety of this conversation, delivers a good story that connects with people. I think at the end of the day, if it’s good, people will like it regardless of what it is.”

Characters Are the Key

In order to connect with viewers you need to give them characters they can relate to and care about. Characters that feel more like cookie cutter clones rather than actual people have been at the core of so many criticisms about Hallmark over the years. The Santa Summit isn’t the only film from the network in 2023 to deliver interesting characters, but the movie stands out in its ability to make every single character feel lived-in, from the leads down to the supporting roles that only pop in for a couple of scenes.

Hunter King, Amy Groening, and Stephanie Sy deliver fantastic performances as Jordin, Ava, and Stella, respectively. Jordin is a heartbroken optimist. Ava is a proud nerd that knows exactly what she wants but isn’t sure how to get it. Stella is the Grinch of the crew, but her slight quibbles with Christmas traditions come from very real places and feelings that anyone in their 30s can relate to.

“I write about characters that I like,” said Hainline. “I think one of the nice things people have said to me about this is that people liked the characters. You certainly get worried when you write a grump character that people won’t like them. And I think that between Stephanie’s performance and the direction, and hopefully my small part in this, people really responded to Stella.”

That relatability extends to all of the core characters in The Santa Summit, each bringing something totally different but just as familiar to the table.

“People would expect the nerd who has cats at home to be a loser or whatever, but Ava is not a loser and she doesn’t view loving math or loving Lord of the Rings as being a loser,” the writer added. “She views it as a requirement in seeking a partner. Stella is a grump, yes, but she’s a grump with very valid reasons to be a grump, and that doesn’t mean she hates everything. She loves her friends. She is just trying to preserve the steam that she has left.

“And you would expect Jordin in a movie like this to require the man in order to be happy, or require her friends in order to be happy. And a big part of this is learning that sometimes, in order to be happiest with your friends or to find that special someone, you have to be your own special someone first. So trying to take some of those character expectations that I think people have in movies like this and making sure that they have some color to them and some flesh and blood.”

We’ve Got the Wrong Idea

Something that Hainline kept coming back to throughout our conversation was his experience working with the folks at Hallmark. It never felt like an endorsement that came from some kind of PR training, but rather genuine excitement and gratitude for the people he’s been able to work with so far.

He connected it to a much bigger conversation in entertainment right now, one that focuses on the intent of the people creating the art we enjoy. What’s the motive behind it? 

The complaint with a lot of big superhero and franchise fare today is that studios are simply rushing films and TV shows together to get some IP out there and grab whatever money they can. It’s easy to believe some films in this day and age are brought to life in a cynical way, with content as the end goal, as opposed to art.

That feeling seems to persist around Hallmark movies as well. The criticisms about the lack of creativity from these movies over time has given way to skepticism about the intent behind them. Hainline has only been around the company for a couple of years, but he painted a much different picture of how things worked over at Hallmark.

“I think there’s this idea that movies are approached cynically when it comes to certain brands,” he explained. “And I can’t speak for other brands, but I think people assume that TV movies or some superhero movies or any genre of movies is going to be approached from the viewpoint of, ‘Let’s just give the audience what they want and cash a check.’ And in my experience with Hallmark, the exact opposite has been the case. They’re so interested, [at least] since I have gotten there, in finding ways of telling these stories that they haven’t done before or have not done in a long time. They are always asking very insightful story questions, visual storytelling questions.”

Not every Hallmark movie is going to be great, but it’s easy to lose sight of the challenges these films have to overcome on their way to the screen. The biggest challenge, of course, is money. These films are made for pennies compared to theatrical releases or Netflix titles. Like anyone who has worked on an indie film set can tell you, the lack of money usually brings out the best creativity. You have to get innovative if you want to be good.

“There are obviously restrictions, as it pertains to budget and time. And the creative people involved in the cast and crew are so good at finding solutions to maximize, tell the story in the best way possible,” Hainline continued. “I don’t speak for everyone, but in my experience, it’s been all story first. How do we tell a story in a new way? How do we reach this audience? How do we help them connect? How do we help our actors find the through-lines for these character arcs? How do we earn that kiss that inevitably comes at the end, rather than just spoon-feeding it? It’s so much work goes into these and so much passion for telling good stories goes into these.”

The Reason for the Season

At the end of the day, the search for joy is what brought Russell Hainline to Hallmark in the first place. So far, the quest seems to have been a success, both in his own life and for those who connected with The Santa Summit.

“You hear all these stories about people who work on projects and the projects are total nightmares,” he said, “and I have had the exact opposite experience. My time with Hallmark has been an absolute joy.”

The Santa Summit will be airing again on The Hallmark Channel on Saturday, December 16th at 10pm ET, as well as on Christmas Eve, December 24th, at 6am ET.