Marvel Star David Harbour Revealed as Santa Claus in First Violent Night Poster

Marvel and Stranger Things star David Harbour has a new acting gig coming up: playing Santa Claus – or at least a Die Hard version of Santa. The holiday action-comedy film Violent Night will be in theaters just before Christmas 2022, and it tells the story of “a group of mercenaries attack the estate of a wealthy family on Christmas Eve, and Santa must save Christmas.” As you can see in the poster below, Harbour is nailing that “Die Hard Santa” vibe, perfectly. 

Violent Night also stars Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon’s Vacation), John Leguizamo (Encanto), Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones), Cam Gigandet (Twilight), and Brendan Fletcher (Arrow) as Krampus. 

David Harbour is enjoying a major career upswing in the last few years. Harbour joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise in the Black Widow movie, playing the Soviet answer to Captain America, Red Guardian (aka Alexei Alanovich Shostakov). Harbour’s Alexei was a definite scene-stealer in Black Widow – so much so that Marvel is bringing him back for the upcoming Thunderbolts movie. That film will see mercenaries and/or criminals like Alexei, Florence Pugh’s Black Widow and Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier all brought together by shady operator Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) for a mission. Thunderbolts will be the big ending to Marvel’s Phase 5 run, and could mark a significant shift in the MCU, possibly opening a whole new lane of the franchise for Harbour to run in. As of writing this, it’s also been announced that David Harbour will star in a Gran Turismo movie, based on the hit racing video game series. 

If the promise of a bigger Marvel payday wasn’t enough, David Harbour still has the highly-anticipated next (final?) season of Netflix’s smash hit series Stranger Things on the horizon. Stranger Things 4 was a big success, and Harbour certainly shined in his branch of the story arc. Speaking about Stranger Things’ success, David Harbour admitted he never thought the show would carry him this far – or even last this long: 

“I remember when we were shooting the first season. We were down in Atlanta, Netflix had given us a budget of about $20,” Harbour joked to BBC’s The One SHow. “Halfway through I remember my hair person coming up to me, like about episode four we were shooting, and she was like, ‘I don’t think it’s gonna work.’” He added, “By the time we finished, we wrapped, I thought we wouldn’t get a second season, we’d be the first Netflix show kind of ever to never get a second season … We thought no one would watch it, it was going to be a disaster.”