Grimaldi: Why holiday films are more than just festive filler

Larry Grimaldi explains why holiday programming is a franchise in its own right and looks at the nine Christmas movies Fox Entertainment Studios has lined up this year, as it eyes international commissions for 2027.

2016 Hallmark film My Christmas Love

Fox Entertainment Studios is heading into the 2026 holiday season with nine new Christmas movies across four networks and streaming platforms and is already laying the groundwork for its 2027 slate – this time with international commissioners firmly in its sights.

The US studio is one of the world’s most prolific producers of holiday-themed content, a position cemented when Fox acquired MarVista Entertainment for more than US$100m in December 2021.

MarVista was founded in 2003 as an independent distributor, and the acquisition was driven largely by the need to feed Tubi, Fox’s fast-growing FAST platform. Since becoming part of Fox, MarVista has continued producing roughly 80 titles a year spanning family, romance, thriller, holiday and action content. The deal brought with it an established holiday production engine, and Fox has been running it at full speed ever since.

That engine, however, is operating in a market that is tightening. Data from research firm Ampere Analysis shows Christmas-themed commissions fell from 93 titles in 2024 to 86 in 2025. Against the post-pandemic peak of 2022, holiday content was down 31% by 2025 – a decline considerably steeper than the roughly 10% drop seen across new TV commissions overall.

Larry Grimaldi

Larry Grimaldi, senior VP of creative affairs and current programming at Fox Entertainment Studios, has overseen close to 120 holiday movies during his nearly 11 years with Fox, and before that MarVista.

To him, holiday programming is more than simply a seasonal calendar slot. “Within the TV movie world, they’re their own franchise,” Grimaldi says. “And it’s one that we’re proud to say made Fox Entertainment Studios one of the biggest producers of holiday-themed content. What we did was embrace who we are and try to double down on these kinds of stories that resonate, entertain and inspire and even create an aspiration in the audiences that watch them.”

He frames the genre within the ‘blue sky’ programming bracket – content that is lighter in tone, optimistic and designed to offer audiences relief from the pressures of daily life, he explains. “No one really wants a dark, dark Christmas movie. It’s not part of what the season brings.”

The Christmas tropes around romance, family reunion chaos and festive traditions provide a universal hook. “Whether [audiences] celebrate the holidays or not, there’s something very relatable to these things,” he says. That global accessibility is a key reason Grimaldi believes holiday programming will remain a permanent fixture of Fox’s content mix. “Holiday programming will always be around, and it will also continue to be a staple of Fox’s content strategy,” he says.

Even if viewers can predict the end of the story, they want to be taken on the storytelling journey. The challenge, he argues, is not to reinvent the formula but to make each film feel individual within it. “Rather than the formula changing, we have to figure out always, as a creative team and as a studio, how to make each film feel fresh and distinct, and culturally relevant.”

While the formula may not change, Grimaldi says the key is to make movies that “don’t feel like they’re coming off an assembly line. We have to approach each movie basically as its own unique snowflake.”

The Christmas Break was shot in Ireland for the Fox network

An example of the formula working at its best, according to Grimaldi, is My Christmas Love, a 2016 Hallmark film starring Meredith Hagner and Bobby Campo. “Year after year, My Christmas Love for Hallmark always appears on that list [of best Christmas movies],” Grimaldi says.

Other standout titles include Christmas is Cancelled, starring Dermot Mulroney, for Amazon’s Prime Video; The Christmas Break, shot in Ireland with Justin Long for the Fox network; and The Christmas Setup for Lifetime. Starring Fran Drescher, with Ben Lewis in the lead, The Christmas Setup was Lifetime’s first same-sex holiday romance – a landmark for the genre.

“It’s a really lovely story that you don’t see very often that has LGBT characters at the front, but it also is about a mom who is really just looking at her kids’ happiness,” Grimaldi comments.

For 2026, Fox’s nine-film slate spans movies for Hallmark, Lifetime, Oprah Winfrey Network and Roku, and Grimaldi is excited about the breadth of stories being told. It is too early to name individual titles in the line-up, but he says they include a tap-dancing holiday film; a Hanukkah movie; an authentic Italian American Christmas Eve story; a sequel to last year’s Lifetime hit Christmas Every Day, starring Brandy Norwood; and a film shot in Portugal about a woman who seeks out the recipient of her late husband’s organ donation.

Dermot Mulroney film Christmas is Cancelled for Prime Video

“Besides the traditional romance and heart, there’s some fun twists and turns that will keep people guessing,” Grimaldi comments about the slate, noting that a big part of it is to focus on stories that have not yet been told. “We’re always trying to figure out how do we be curious and find a way in that’s different and fresh that will still serve audiences everywhere,” he explains.

The Hanukkah film in this year’s line-up is a case in point. “Not everybody does Christmas the way we have Christmas in our mind,” he says. “As a storyteller, we always love to give voices to the voiceless.” For Grimaldi, that pursuit cuts across representation, casting, cultural settings and the stories themselves. The goal, always, is to make audiences see themselves on screen.

Fox’s international production ambitions are already well developed. Films in the current holiday slate have been shot in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Canada, Mexico and Portugal, says Grimaldi. In previous years the studio has filmed in Italy, Ireland, Colombia, New Zealand and Australia. The breadth of locations in Fox’s Christmas content is as much about making a creative statement as it is about a commercial or logistical choice.

“In creating that global production footprint, it brings in audiences globally. Also, there’s an aspirational piece to that where it says, ‘Wow, the world isn’t so closed off. The world isn’t just what’s in my backyard,’ and that we all experience the joy of the season,” says Grimaldi.

Christmas Setup was Lifetime’s first same-sex holiday romance movie

Despite the many locations it shoots in, Fox does not currently have any international commissions on its holiday slate, but Grimaldi is making this a priority as the studio prepares its 2027 slate.

“As a leader in content creation, specifically holiday content, there’s no reason we can’t pitch UK commissioners the same way we pitch US buyers,” he says. The financial model may differ, he acknowledges, but the principle is the same: understand the buyer’s brand, know their audience and serve the locality. “We don’t have any on the holiday slate yet, but that is my goal and I am embarking on that journey,” he says.

Grimaldi concludes: “It’s our job as content creators to constantly assess the marketplace and provide meaningful, diverse content to our audiences. Our audiences are global, and they still want holiday films because they have broad appeal – it’s a joyous thing to watch.”