We spoke w/ ABoyCalledChristmas director gilkenan about making the family adventure, why he always treats kids like adults, and if he has plans for a sequel.
With A Boy Called Christmas now streaming on Netflix, I recently spoke to director Gil Kenan about making this Christmas fantasy film. The film is about a young boy named Nikolas , his pet mouse, and a headstrong reindeer, who set out on an extraordinary adventure to find Nikolas’ father who is on a quest to discover the fabled village of the elves, Elfhelm.
KENAN: So I call this the Little Match Girl hypothesis, and I've only heard it once before. And that was when I joked about it at some point toward the end of the shoot, when it occurred to me that there is a different read on this film. KENAN: Yes. Actually, finished filming, because we had to stop for the reset to London. We actually waited several months for winter in London, to shoot the opening and closing scenes, because I had to have all the leaves off the trees. So we waited about four or five months after wrapping the film, or maybe longer. I can't remember, but we waited quite a while before coming back to film the last bit. So we actually finished right before the pandemic in 2020.
One of the things that I really like is the way that you…and you do this in all your projects. You're not talking down to the children, you're treating them like adults. Can you sort of talk about that aspect of the script? The story deals with death, it deals with grief. And you're treating the kids with a lot of respect.
There are some adult jokes when all the townsfolk are in front of the king and asking for things. Was that stuff in the book, or that's just stuff you put in the movie? KENAN: Yeah. The book has really ferocious storytelling, which is great. I think that keeps you on the edge of the page as you follow Nicholas on his adventure.
KENAN: Well, I was lucky to have Framestore as a partner from pre-production actually on this film. So I met with them and had a sense from the very first conversations, that for them, this was going to be a labor of love. Obviously, we had to pay them too, but the artists who came onto the project from Framestore were passionate about helping me tell this story. Each of them really committed.
But what for me it sparked is the idea that even though Santa Claus is a near universal character and his iconography, his aesthetics, all of it is almost virtually known around this world, there actually is a very personal relationship that everyone has with this character. Kristen Wiig, who I'm obviously a big fan of, plays a small role, but important role in the film. How did you get her in the movie?
There's not one scene with Mika where we didn't elevate by lines that he would write, lines that I would suggest, that then he would improve on. And it always ended up with a version of the character that was coming more and more to life with every session. I can't believe anybody would do it any other way.
It's such a nice feeling, especially at this time of year, especially on this year, to feel like there's something positive that people are connecting with. So my best answer for it is the most honest one, which is that like anything else we do in this business, we'll work on the story. If the story gets there, I think that we now have at least the beginnings of a fan base for this world of Christmas storytelling.
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