Hello and welcome to How Did This Not Get Made?
This is the podcast all about the movies you've never seen, the scripts that were never
filmed, and the ideas that never even made it to the page.
My name is Daniel Jingle, Jingle Kawka.
And I'm just regular Lexcee Riley.
I'm not as clever.
[Applause]
So, I wrote in my notes, Zoinks!
And I can't seem to like say it without laughing.
Jinkies.
But welcome to The Holiday Special, where we're going to talk about a movie that technically
did get made.
Yes.
You're just probably never going to see it.
Yeah, we're talking about two things that don't exist.
Santa and Trichael Donut could not exist.
And we have a few other holiday shenanigans in store.
So I'm sensing that there's a slight theme to the episodes I'm choosing.
I'm extrapolating on previous episodes that you've done that mean a lot to me.
Interesting.
So we've seen that in the creature and then doing Dark Universe, and then NASKOOBIE
DO.
Oh.
All of the scoop.
I feel like now I'm doing all the work.
Listen.
Actually, you did give a really detailed history of Scooby-Doo and took a lot away from me
where I was like, "Ah, that the history is already there."
No.
So if you want to listen to that, it's our September 2nd, 2022 episode.
You know the exact date.
I don't even know that.
I did research.
I did do some work.
This is like anyone like Star Wars fans who come up to Harrison Ford and they're just
like, "Yeah, what about that one time where you shot Grito?
Like, was it you?"
And he's like, "I don't give a shit."
Yep.
That's 100% what it is.
So at the point of that episode, Scoob Holiday Haunt was officially canceled.
That was the last that we had heard of.
It fell victim to the WB Discovery merger and it turns out like I said, "This film is basically
done, but to two tax breaks it can't be sold or streamed or anything where money can be
used."
So, bah humbug to that.
In order to understand the extensive work already done on holiday haunt, let's jump back
to Scoob.
Okay.
That came out in 2020, Paneenie Times.
Yes.
Which is around the time that I watched it for the only time, I believe.
I don't know why it just flew under the radar because I am a bit of a Scooby fan.
Scoob was intended to be a reboot of the theatrical side of Scooby Doo specifically.
It's technically the third movie following my personal favorite live action cast of Scooby
Doo 2002 and Scooby Doo Monsters in the age of 2004.
In your episode, we've talked about how there are many amalgamations.
Sometimes the ladies are there, sometimes they're not.
It's weird how infrequent that show is.
For an IP that seems consistent, they don't seem to glass for like more than two, three
years.
No.
And then they're constantly swapping out characters or like who's important or what
relationship we're supposed to care about.
But because it's linked to those two specifically, it tithers back to a point I will make.
Okay.
Like I said, I'm a bit of a Scoob fan.
I dressed up as Daphne for quite a few Halloween.
I dressed up as Shaggy, but specifically the zombie apocalypse Shaggy once for Halloween.
Right.
That's the one I want them to do.
Is that what member of the gang you are?
Shaggy?
To consider yourself a Shaggy?
I mean, I don't see myself as a Velma.
I mean, your options are Fred or I guess Scooby?
I'm hot dog water.
No, God.
Okay.
So there are the five core members of Mystery Inc.
Obviously we've got our K9 Scoobert Scooby Doo.
Then there is the self-proclaimed leader, Fred?
Yes.
I mean, he's the one who puts all the traps together and if you're the one who makes and
designs the traps, you're kind of the one who's telling everyone what to do.
Yeah.
That's why I'm going to say self-proclaimed.
And then we've got the brains of the operation, Velma, Dinkley, and then the bait, Danger
Prone, Daphne, Blake.
Although she did learn a cratae, so...
Marshall, R, it's yes, yes, yes, yes.
She can be the bait, but she is strong.
Right.
She's taking it back.
And then we've got Scoob's best friend, Norval, Shaggy Roberts.
The cast behind Mystery Inc. are just as notable as their cartoon counterparts.
Frank Welker is the MVP of the mystery.
The OG.
He was originally vying for the part of Shaggy because it seemed like a very fun role and
he landed the role of Fred.
But how I came up with that voice was basically it's my own voice with maybe five cups of coffee.
Hey, would you do it for a Scooby-Stack?
Oh gosh, one, come on, guys.
Hey, I can drive because I have a license.
I can see that Fred is very like puppy energy.
Yeah, it is uncanny how his cadence just beats up.
What's interesting is Casey Kasey wanted the role of Fred.
And Warner Brothers swapped it and was like, no, no, no.
But like, thank God.
Yeah, it's like with Matt LaBlanc.
I originally auditioned for Rachel, but they thought too much penis.
No, no, no.
This is a family show.
Sort of.
You might also know Frank Welker as Megatron in the animated Transformers and Smoky the
Bear.
Mm-hmm.
Only you can prevent forest fires.
That was brand new information for me.
I didn't know he was Smoky the Bear.
I know that when he was working at Hannah Barbera, like those actors, this is around the time
when I mean, actors were kind of fading away from like studio loyalty, but a lot of times
because at Hannah Barbera, they're just like, we're working on like 10 cartoons at once.
We got all these actors here anyway.
We got to fill in some roles.
So that makes sense.
Yeah, he started out as Fred Jones and then has played various roles in the Scooby Universe
since 1969, including Fred's father, William.
He's provided the voice for Scooby himself since 2002.
That was after the death of...
Don't make it.
And he was actually attached to Scoob, Polly Hunt.
As Scooby, in 2014, Casey Kason passed, leaving Frank as the only living member of the original
Scooby-Doo cast.
Casey Kason was the original voice of Shaggy from 1969 to 1997, then again from 2002 to 2009.
I wondered why there was a gap there.
Do you know why there was a gap there?
It turns out.
It's because Shaggy voiced a Burger King commercial.
Like I'm starving, Scoob.
And Kason was a tried and true vegan who was heavily evolved in animal rights.
He only returned to the role after it was changed.
That Shaggy was a vegetarian.
Interesting.
I went back and looked at what Shaggy was eating in the live action ones.
It is an eggplant burger and a pizza with hot peppers.
And that pizza looks pretty vegetarian to me.
Interesting.
That's kind of like when Paul McCartney did a voice for the Simpsons.
And he agreed to do the voice if they put in some message of being vegetarian and after
that episode, Lisa became a vegetarian.
Ah, yeah.
I like that.
There's been a handful of Valmas from the original Winnacolca Jaffee to the Facts of Life
MindyCon, too most recently, Mindy Katelyn.
Yeah.
And some diehard definitely is from original Idrina Stefaniaana, to Greg Griffin, to the daughter
of Zina Adrienne Wilkinson.
The 2002 and 2004 live action Scoobies have to go down as some of the best casting in history,
especially with Matthew Lillard, who was so dedicated to the role.
He would scream himself horse.
Yeah.
He's done many interviews talking about doing the Shaggy voice, like even in doing the voice
acting that he would just destroy his voice after a day's worth of work.
Apparently there's one time where he is in the car and the Warner Brothers was like,
"Hey, can you come in and audition again?"
And so he was in the car just screaming as much as possible.
And this person walked by and was like, "Are you okay, man?"
As you said in the James DeGun Scooby Doo Valma was played by Linda Cardellini.
Daphne was Sarah Michelle Geller and Fred was played by Freddie Prince Jr.
Perfection.
This is the version I'm most familiar with and I've watched it more times than I'd like
to admit.
And I'm going to say right now, throw Frank Welker in that Scooby, best Scooby cast ever.
Yeah.
So why, or remember why they chose a different actor?
I don't.
It was for the Australian film tax credit.
Ah.
Yeah, so the tax credits, super important to Scooby more.
Exactly.
So they ended up hiring an Australian actor who was actually a stunt actor originally who
could do the Scooby voice and they hired him to do Scooby because they needed more Australian
cast members.
I watched in like a two hour behind the scenes thing.
I love the behind the scenes.
And he would sit off camera and like sometimes regularly, sometimes like a dog or like sometimes
like couldn't help himself.
It was like doing the action.
Mm-hmm.
I was like, okay, I get that we couldn't use Frank Welker.
So like, what a great Australian choice.
My favorite interview that came from that movie was Sarah Michelle Geller putting more meaning
into the movie like.
Offered so much more than every other cartoon.
It was so ahead of its time.
It had a story.
They worked hard to figure it out and it wasn't gender specific.
It wasn't a voice cartoon or a girl's cartoon or any of those things.
It was a talking dog.
That is my favorite how a woman's brain working.
It's a talking dog.
Like, what word do you want?
Exactly.
This is why I love Scooby.
It's so good.
And while like I said, there's been many people to Don the Voices of Mystery Incorporated,
the casting of our favorite gang is incredibly important.
I think this is one of the like cracks in the foundation of why the reboot hit a snag.
For starters in Scoob, we flash back to the young versions of the gang.
And yes, we've done this before.
It's been in various Scooby things.
Both sets of Mystery Incorporated, we're going to call them the elders and the little's
just for separation's sake, are flooded with star power.
So it sort of seems like they outshine each other cast-wise.
According to the interwebs, the elder mystery gang is supposed to be in their early 20s,
which blew my mind.
Yeah, the ages have varied throughout its many iterations, excluding pop name Scooby-Doo.
Yeah, their ages are usually like, we're in high school to like early 20s or like, maybe
their 30s.
I guess the word just used to seeing them in their 20s and that's not something I ever
thought about.
Both Matthew Lillard and Greg Griffin were upset to have not been contacted over casting,
although both wished the thing well after it had been made.
Nothing against Will Forte, who actually wound up getting cast as Shaggy.
But he and Matthew Lillard, same age, they're both 54.
Oh.
Playing 21, 22, the magic of animation.
I mean, that's kind of like the voice of Fred in his 70s, 80s now, still doing Fred?
Fred Walker?
Yeah.
He's not doing Fred anymore.
Oh.
He plays Fred's father.
Yeah, and Scooby, actually speaking of Fred, he would be played by Zac Efron.
That's a choice.
I get it because they were trying to make Fred more like athletic and funny and like built
a little bit.
And you can see it in the animation.
Velma would be played by Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin.
I really do love that casting.
I think everything she does is great.
Daphne would play by Amanda Sepred.
Of Mama Mia Faye.
Yeah.
There's a 30% chance that it's already raining.
Yep, but we at least get Frank Walker as Scooby.
So those are some pretty big names for our Elder Scooby cast.
Yeah.
But I'm just kind of like baffled by why animated movies need to sell the fact that they have
these a-lis actors as their cast because we don't see their faces.
We hear their voices.
No, it feels so different from our childhood.
Because I was way too old when I realized like a lot of Disney movies are played by, or
at least the Disney Renaissance of it.
It was two different actors, one for speaking and one for singing.
Like what?
Yeah.
Like you actually hired voice actors, people who like specialize in doing stuff like this,
but it just, I don't know why studios insist that no, we need a-lis actors to be the voices
of these people.
And I guess it is fun to like watch Despic will me for and be like, oh, that is Will Ferrell.
And I'm just like, oh my god.
And I'm like, oh, I can hear that.
And I'm just like, but what am I really gaining from that other than like, I can kind
of hear Will Ferrell?
Yeah, what 10-year-old is like, ah, Transylvania, that is Catherine Han.
Yeah.
I just don't understand the need for it or if there's really a difference in the poll because
it's the IP that is going to sell it.
I wonder how much longer that's going to be a thing based off of like, you know, we are
now using social media standards to sort of cast people.
We're in a state of like, let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.
And one way to quickly cut a budget is to cast a bunch of no names.
Maybe we won't stay like that.
Hopefully not.
Yeah.
And we're starting to see that the poll that actors have for a film is starting to kind
of dwindle.
Yeah.
This was definitely within like the Marvel era that we started to like see the drop off
of it.
But like recently we had another Christmas movie, Red One, where the rock he demanded to
be paid $50 million for his role.
That is bigger than the entire budget of Scoob holiday, huh?
He costs the studio $50 million more because of his tardiness.
Oh my, I did hear about this.
Yeah.
His behavior on set was like frustrating the entire cast cost the production $50 more
million.
So the rock himself was $100 million dollars alone.
And then you had to make a movie on top of that.
You can make two Scoob holiday.
You can make so many.
But everything we're going to measure in the metric of how many holiday haunts you could
have made.
And then for the movie too, an opening weekend make, I think it was like just over 30 million.
That's because it was released November 15th.
I think they saw the green light of Wicked Up ahead and they're just like we cannot compete
with that.
So I blame the rock for holiday on.
No.
Well, maybe a little bit.
Okay.
We have our star-studded elder cast.
And then in the story, we flash back to the gang during their very first mystery.
And that is around the age of 10.
And the little's cast is phenomenal.
It's in armate of young Sheldon, a shecking, Ariana Greenblatt of Barbie, a Velma, a
mechanic grace, who's literally played the young version of every female in the last
decade.
Hill House, to Phoebe and the new Ghostbusters.
She voices Daphne.
And then Pierce Gagnon, who appeared in Looper around the age of six, was cast as Fred.
I didn't know what he had done a lot of.
There's a quote from Ryan Johnson of knives out fame.
It's really rare to find a kid who can do what he does.
He would do three-page dialogue scenes with Emily Blunt and Joseph Gordon Levit and
hold his own against them all the way through.
So like good on him.
Yeah, good for you.
The caliber of these young actors makes so much sense with where they intended Scoob to go.
Even though the little's are outstanding, I really wish they would have actually used the
live-action elders from like our Freddie Prince Jr.
Oh, yeah.
If they would have used them as the elder cast, you're pulling in an entire audience from
that.
And then you actually really let the little shine as like the new cast.
So Scoob starts with young Shaggy finding and becoming friends with Scooby.
Oh.
It's very sweet.
And then we cut to Halloween night, Shaggy and Scooby meet the rest of the gang and enter,
you guessed it, a haunted house.
Where what do you think they do?
They find a masked man trying to scare them.
It is a thief.
And they unmask.
Boy, they think it's a ghost.
They unmask the ghost, turns out it's a thief.
It's a very cute little intro and exactly why we do love them.
Then we cut to present day, mystery and because of business.
They're meeting with Simon Cowell.
Simon Cowell playing himself in the movie.
Yeah, it's weird.
This reference seemed really dated to me even for 2020.
Yes.
Simon Cowell doesn't like Scooby and Shaggy's behavior, so that's off.
And Dick Dasterley is after Scooby and Shaggy.
And never fear, they are rescued by Blue Falcon, DD Skies and Dino Mut.
Yeah.
And they're really pulling from the Hannah Barbarra like roster.
There's a roster.
Meanwhile, Fred, Daphne and Velma discover that Dasterley is after Scooby because only Scooby
because he's the descend dog of Alexander the Great's Dog, Parrotus.
This actually reminds me of the live action version.
Scooby's once again super important needs to be protected at all costs and you know, there's
the whole like soul thing.
So Scooby, Shaggy and the Blue Falcon game go to Mystic Mountain, which I thought was
like a really nice way to honor the OG Scoob because that's his name.
Scooby and Shaggy have their typical scuffle.
Scooby gets captured and Dasterley gets muttly back.
So does this make Scooby the new like damsel and distress?
There are several words like Scoob keeps getting captured.
I mean, there's been multiple instances where Scooby does get captured.
Yeah.
It's no longer Daphne getting captured at Scooby.
There are instances where both Scooby and Shaggy like together will get captured and there's
like been multiple episodes where that happens, but yeah, it's I think just it's nice that
Daphne's not the damsel and distress anymore.
Yes.
And of course our mystery saves the day and catches muttly and Dasterley before performing
their traditional unmasking.
And it's Simon Cowell.
Who apparently was a Rumptum Tucker in his secondary school's performance of Cats?
What a line thrown in.
Simon Cowell?
Wow, that is a solid impersonation.
Thank you.
I also played Rumptum Tucker in my secondary school's production of Cats.
This makes no sense.
Is that real?
That is an actual line from the movie.
Oh, do you think he actually didn't realize?
I have no idea.
I don't know.
I'm going to have to fact check that.
I remember watching this movie and he says it and I was like, what?
And of course, Valma catches the lot.
Like, you know, anybody who hears that is like, you're not the real Kaper and then removes
the mask again.
And who is it?
It actually is Dictastrally.
Yeah.
The amount of fake outs to do, like you would have to think about that ahead of time to
be like, I'm going to get caught.
So I'm going to put a mask on top of my face to put another mask on top of that face so
that if they unmask me, they're going to think I'm someone else, even though I'm still
getting arrested.
Yes.
The double unmasking happens quite a few times and I really, really, I'm always forever going
to hope that somehow they pull off the second mask and it's Don Nots.
That's what I need.
I needed to be done that.
It's always Don Nots.
Well, what do you think you saw?
Don Nots.
The movies are actually really cute.
But in my research, I think I found like another crack in the foundation of like, why holiday
Haunt didn't come out.
Okay.
So Scoob was meant to be the start of a cinematic universe.
I'm seeing a theme with whatever you choose.
I'm not doing this on purpose, but it's me.
I'm the problem.
So in 2016, Entertainment Weekly reported an announcement video for Scoob was described
as our first shot at unlocking the whole Hannah Barbera universe implying that the long-term
plan is for Scooby Doo reboot to lead a whole series of linked franchises based on the cartoons
of William Hannah and Joseph Barbera.
Warner subsidiary DC Comics is rolling out a slate of Hannah Barbera comics.
Energy holds we could be getting a high octane big screen reboot of wacky races as early
as 2020.
Heck, sea lab 2020 could get a reboot by 2020.
This is their monster tweet.
Yeah, legitimately.
Screenwriter Matt Lieberman actually said the original idea for Scoob, which actually stood
for special covert organization of otherworldly beasts.
No.
No, you don't need to acronym Scoob.
No.
Originally it was though, it had the little dots unnecessary.
Unnecessary is 100% correct.
If you watch the movie, you do know that's not the case.
However, Scoob director and writer producer of holiday haunt, he also worked on one of
our childhood favorites, York Times based jam.
Yeah, Tony Zervani worked on space jam and the scoop stuff.
Wait, was he the director?
He was the director of Scoob, any writer producer of holiday haunt, so it worked on both of them.
But he basically confirmed the cinematic universe theory.
At one point we did have more characters in the movie.
And the reason they're not in is it's a 90 minute movie and you have to spend enough
time with characters.
So at one point, yeah, grape ape was in the movie.
Jabberjaw was in the movie.
Adam Ante was in the movie, but we just didn't have enough time.
We couldn't keep them alive long enough.
I'm starting to see, I think that's the point you're making because we did.
Oh, this is still his quote.
This is straight from director still.
Yeah, but we still, like I'm trying to think of like the the monster universe where they
were trying to like, just shove in as many monsters as possible and we like, you don't
have to do that.
Can you imagine my surprise when I like stumbled into this?
I was like, oh my god, did it again.
So you can't care about them enough, so they started stripping them away.
At the core, you want to end this movie really emotionally attached to Scooby and Shaggy
dastardly and muttly and dynamite and blue Falcon, which even that to me feels like too much.
That's too much.
I think if you just made it about Shaggy and Scooby, just make it about the mystery ink.
I want all of them.
But okay, so he said there might be little cameos.
And I think when we first started, this was much more like a Hannah Barbera Avengers.
Straight up quote.
I know there's not much you can actually like refer it to and it kind of seems insulting
that you working at Warner Brothers where there's a DC.
Right.
They're trying to put together their own universe and you're just like, yeah, like Marvel,
the other place.
Like you can see all of the cracks to this form.
Yes.
You have a cast that were not super like we're familiar with them, but we have a cast that
like we grew up loving.
But you got the cast issues got this multiverse of madness.
My other point that this seems like a problem is you're really focusing on Scooby and Shaggy.
And I think the beauty of mystery ink is there's literally someone for everyone.
And when you focus on Scooby and Shaggy, you run into a problem because you've removed all
the ladies.
Yeah, you make it about their friendship, which I mean, if you're going to just make a
movie about those two and then at the end of the movie, maybe they're just like, they
run into the rest of the mystery ink team.
Right.
Come with us, but the fact that they're introduced so early that you need to.
If you want to do a mystery ink movie, you got to include them all.
If you want to do a Shaggy and Scooby movie, totally fine, but that's a different movie.
The reviews were mixed.
Brian LaRae for CNN review said, granted, Scooby appears more into recycling than reinvention.
It's more of a snack than a meal, but it does endeavor to make an old concept fresh and
cool again in children's eyes.
That might answer the question, why this movie exists?
But based on the results, nothing here merits the exclamation point.
To me, there's also something about the animation.
It feels very, like, digitalizing and puterized, but also somehow, like, slightly dated.
Yeah, there's been this look with animation.
And I kind of, I don't blame Pixar per se, but like, Pixar created that kind of smooth
look.
Oh, it is reminiscent of Toy Story a little bit.
And then with that Disney animation, then made the Switch to try and replicate that.
And then every studio after that, like Dreamworks, Blue Sky, they were taking on this idea that,
like, if you're going to do a CG animated movie, this is the type of look that you have to
do.
Yeah.
Basically we're having studios break away from that and actually, like, figuring out what
you can do in CG, but do kids these days like it?
Kids these days.
How old am I?
You're a leveling kids.
I think it has to do with what are they familiar with because you think about like what kinds
of CG movies or animated movies that they are used to or at least the look of it.
Like you have the minions, you have Transylvania, you have Despicable Me.
And it is that smooth-ing look, they figure that if they're going to do a Scooby-Doo movie,
they have to adopt this type of look and style.
Yeah.
I guess to us who like grew up with like rewatching the cartoon and having our own sets of animation,
I find it very uncanny, Valley.
We also grew up in an era where we had the puller express and we were introduced to CGI that
way and we're like, oh, I don't know about that.
I was going to say I don't love that movie and now it makes sense because I am perturbed.
Yeah.
So we were there in the transition time where kids these days have- Kids these days.
Yeah.
There is a certain animation style that is expected with these movies.
Yeah.
Like even look at Charlie Brown.
My movie was cute.
Yeah.
Yeah, but the recent Charlie Brown movie, like that wasn't a like- I was less smooth.
Hannon-Pate Earth.
Right.
We're doing everything completely CG.
Yeah.
Just the way of the future, it changes like what animators do.
Maybe in the future we'll have hand drawn mixed with it.
I would say you look at the newest Teenage Mutant Into Turtles movie.
Yeah.
Or Spider-Verse.
Yeah.
Where you can take the medium of CG animation, but you can actually stylize it.
Right.
Like the initial idea behind making CG animation was that you wanted to replicate real life
as much as possible.
And now we've hit that point where you can render images digitally to make them look real.
And now what's the difference between that and reality?
So you have to kind of shoehorn it into a certain style, so that people know CG animated.
Right.
And if you hear the real life Scooby in the background, he's just upset about the construction.
We haven't given him enough Scooby Snacks.
He's never enough Scooby Snacks for him.
Okay.
So the budget is not necessarily like a crack.
This is a gaping wound of evidence as to why Holiday Haundin came out.
So Scoop had a budget of 90 million.
Holiday Haund had a budget of 40 million.
So we are already slashing that.
And when you look at the box office, there's no secret why.
28 million worldwide, two million in the United States and Canada, which seemed low for me,
but remember this is 2020.
Yeah.
What month, 2020?
I don't know.
Okay.
I think it just went straight to...
It went straight to Vod here.
Yeah.
And this is one of those weird periods where movies were experimenting with like we're
going to do same day theatrical relief.
The day that you think.
Oh yeah.
Deep into it.
Yeah.
So we're strict lockdown at this point.
Yes.
Yeah.
There was no theatrical release.
I remember the price to rent out that movie was something like $25 or...
And they still do that.
In a lot of ways, Scoob and like the pandemic and then holiday Haund are a perfect example
of what's happening in the industry.
So again, we've got 28 million worldwide, two million in the United States and Canada and
26 internationally and worldwide are the same.
Why is that one sentence?
Because one of them was people, Mr. worldwide.
Mr. worldwide.
Actually, yeah, 20 million from people.
That's not a lot.
So they didn't make their money back.
They didn't even make back what would have been a budget for holiday Haund.
It was however, the third most watch title on Vaughan in 2020.
So like we were watching it at home.
Yeah, they were just not making the money that they expected.
Right.
Because when you think about like if a family goes out to see this movie in theaters, that
family, each one of them needs a buy ticket, buying all the snacks and drinks and all that
stuff for them.
But now that you're at home, you just buy the one rent fee.
Right.
You stack in all the kids, theater, double seating, just like stadium style in the living room.
Right.
You have snacks that are real cheap.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, like you're proving all my points.
If you had a family, it's a perfect situation.
40 million dollars for animation in today's climate is absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
And that's what I'm saying.
For what the rock got paid, we could make holiday Haund two plus times.
Yeah.
So in June of 2021, Scoob holiday Haund was Greenlit with a release date of December,
22nd, 2022.
That time light in that budget are absolutely insane.
I really can't wrap my head around how they finished it.
Holiday Haund is a prequel directed by, I'm gonna butcher their names and I'm so sorry.
Michael Ternsky and Bill Holler.
Both of which called it a knives out for kids.
It was supposed to be a true mystery.
It took place three days before Christmas.
There were going to be three monsters and some pretty epic chase scenes.
The inspiration they were taking was from Stranger Things, Clue, and only murders in the building.
And there was going to be a lot of classic Christmas influence.
This is so cool.
This one's great.
So upset.
So it's set 10 years before Scoob.
So we've got 10 year old Shaggy and the gang go to Fred's uncle, Ned.
Do they all rhyme in that family?
I hope so.
Fred Ned Tid.
That's really all I got.
And they go to a holiday themed resort.
Which to me being a fan of spooky island, I love when they go to a themed resort.
I'm a sucker for a Scoob gang themed resort.
I mean, that's kind of indicative of every Hallmark holiday movie where whatever B and B
that they're staying at is always like a Christmas themed one.
And be like, you do this all year and be like, yeah, it's Christmas all year.
I want to go to a Christmas themed resort or a Hanukkah themed resort.
I hope it's like a winter holiday.
You get your Hanukkah, your quanza, your Christmas.
Have you ever been to Frankenmood?
I have.
Yeah.
Go to boners.
All that is is just a 365 day Christmas store.
And it's huge.
It's massive.
I have not gone in a very long time and I think I'm due.
Yeah.
It is a warehouse.
There are six warehouses.
Yeah.
There are different rooms that have different themes in them.
Christmas isn't just the theme.
It is like Christmas is just the destination and all of those different rooms are the journey
you go on.
And then when you're done, you go to Yodors and get chicken.
This is a big thing for Michigan kids if you can't tell.
Okay.
So they're at this holiday themed resort and of course they're go go go go go go.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And there's a haunting and a 40 year old mystery and need of solving.
And along the way, they learn the true meaning of Christmas.
Capitalism?
Yep.
But the young mystery and cast of Scoob and Frank Welker are back along with an even more
drinky cast than the first.
You got Michael McKean as Uncle Ned.
Do you know who Michael McKean is?
I do not.
Oh my god.
He's Doug Forset from the good place and he's Mr. Green and glue casting gold.
And then the late great Andre Brower who said I've always had a soft spot for Scooby-Doo
Amen.
He was cast as chef Dave, the resort's head chef who befriends the children.
Our past away in December of 2023 and this looks to be one of his last projects.
And when I sent you the image, you immediately got excited and said Condiment King.
I don't know that that's where his role was going to go, but it's really cool to see
that he's got like cheese graders on his arm and he's got like condiments in his belt.
It's very sad that for like that sake alone, we don't get to see it.
I brought it up because there was maybe a chance it could be Condiment King just because
it is DC Comics.
Yeah.
And Scooby is also met Condiment King, so that makes a lot of sense.
Kazzy?
I know they met back.
Ording to the inner webs.
Oh, I know they met Batman.
Right.
I mean, why wouldn't you?
Yeah.
I thought that was a very, very fun place for that to go.
Again, the script is nowhere to be found.
And part of me really hopes that it's not because it's just under lock and key because they're
trying to figure out a way to release it.
Okay.
So additional actors were Christo Fernandez of Ted Lasso.
Who is?
Football is life.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Ming Na Wen.
Willon?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maya Hawk, Stranger Things.
Oh, fun.
And Pryor Ferguson, of Stranger Things.
She's here.
So they had secured one more little role in the way of a Skywalker turned phenomenal voice
actor, Mark Hamill.
Oh, yes.
The directors seemed really jazzed to have him on board.
And word on the street was that he was playing none of the, then the man with the bag,
Cyclaz.
Oh.
And the script is locked tight somewhere.
So there are things that say he played Uncle Ned.
There are things that say he was going to be Santa.
My personal thing is like Michael McKee as Uncle Ned.
And Mark Hamill as Santa makes so much sense to him.
Yeah.
And they actually got an actual voice actor, which was, yeah, Mark Hamill.
I mean, that's the beauty of Mark Hamill, though, right?
Like he went from being a traditional screen actor to being one of the most well-known voice
actors of our generation.
Yeah.
And he had heard his Joker, I don't know what you're doing.
Yeah.
You know why he went into voice acting, right?
No.
He's entertaining.
So it was between New Hope and Empire.
He had gotten in.
Oh, from his accident?
Yeah, he got into a car accident and he's like, I don't think, like, the moneymaker got
to hit him.
Yeah, he's like, I don't think I can like keep showing my face in front of the camera after
that injury.
So he just like honed in on to just being a voice actor rather than trying to.
Which is nuts, because he's still a phenomenal screen actor.
Yes.
He's so upset because this is where things are going to take a heartbreaking.
Oh.
And the scoop holiday hunt was abruptly canceled on August 2nd, 2022, three months short of
its release, eight weeks before projected deadline.
When did the merger officially happen?
Uh.
Okay.
I'm just curious as to what the timeline is from like David Zazelov coming in doing whatever
nonsense he's still allowed to do.
April 8th.
Okay.
So yeah, a few months after.
So if we remember, they had less than two years and this tiny budget to get this movie
done.
And if you know anything about filmmaking, they were full steam ahead.
The team was 95% complete at the time of cancellation.
This is the worst part to me.
The news leaked before a handful of crew members were told.
Chernsky found out via Twitter when a stranger asked him if it was true.
Yeah, that seems to be the case for like actors who are canceled or written out of a show.
Like they'll find out from tabloids.
I feel like we're getting better at it though.
And this is more of a modern day example of this happening.
I remember happening a lot more when we were kids, but I think because the internet takes
over so drastically these days, we have a respect for it now.
You don't want to leak spoilers like, you know, I just can't imagine they were sitting
working on the movie.
And then he just opened his social media and his whole life changed.
This was their directing debut.
They've been working in animation all of their lives like they're legends and they finally
get this movie.
They are almost done and literally is pulled out from underneath them.
Not even given a chance.
The stage and the musicians for the score were already paid.
So post-cancelation, they recorded the complete score anyway.
Like what else are you left to do?
In early November of 2022, Tony Silverone, director of Scoob writer, producer of holiday
Haunt posted to Instagram, "Well, we finished the thing today.
A better sweet conclusion for sure.
I really hope you get a chance to see it somehow.
It's a good one."
He goes on, he congratulates the directors, the cast, the crew.
He said they understand the characters, comedy, and spooky thrills so well.
Every minute with you was a pleasure.
The team went from nothing, not even a script, to a full finished film in less than two years.
And like, it's just never gonna be celebrated.
It's never gonna see the light of day.
And all because of tax credits.
Yeah.
In preparation for the show, you're doing this and you're finding it frustrating that there
was no script that was out there.
You can find anything, no leak or anything like that.
And I remember from doing the Kingdom of the Sun episode, which was the Emperor's New
Groove episode, when they were putting that movie together because they were scrambling
to put it together.
There was no actual official script.
After the movie had released.
I think it was the WGA had come to them and be like, "You have to register that script."
And the directors of it were like, "We don't have one."
So they sent a bunch of PAs to go to the theater and watch the movie and transcribe the whole
movie to make an official script.
An official script was submitted after the movie was released.
Honestly, I guess, thank God we live in this day and age where you could just be like,
computer transcribe.
I have a feeling that this is sort of a similar case, like understanding how fast they were
flying by the sea.
Like, I don't think anyone unless you work in the industry understands what a feat this
was.
Scoob took five years to make, five years, and double the budget.
It has mixed reviews and you can say what you want about it, but it is a very cute wholesome
film.
And now you literally pull half of that away.
And they made something better?
I mean, from everything that you read, it sounds like it was going to be so good and you
have the issue of having the two casts that I was trying each other gone.
Their budget was set, their timeline was set, and they did it.
So a lot of the issues that you would have had, they're already like, "Well, okay, wipe
that away."
So a lot of the things that were hitting hard at Scoob were not in holiday hunt.
You don't have to worry about the multiverse.
Like you don't have to worry about the competing cast.
And then you had a team that was so jazzed.
Like to make their directing debut, you know they were putting every piece of effort into
this.
It's very heartbroken, heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking.
So heartbreaking that I can't find my words.
Yeah, there's definitely pieces of media movies, TV shows that adapt an IP and you can always
tell when the movie or TV show is being taken care of by a genuine fan.
If they have been an animation for so long, like Scooby-Doo is one of the staples of animation.
So like they would know Scooby inside and out.
And I watched so many interviews because the information is so scattered and so sort of
like everyone who hears this is like, "Ah, Zaz love cut it."
And that's never the story.
It is never so one no and black and white.
There's always way more to it.
Like I told Dan this was very, very frustrating to do.
I love Scooby and I wanted to give him all of the energy that I could, but to not be able
to find the script, to not be able to find like the proper breadcrumbs to get a straight
answer was really frustrating.
So you couldn't find the script.
That's the thing that we like to present is the story that you may not have heard of
before.
But there's been research that I've done before where the script just could not be found.
And anyway, shape or form, and I just kind of have to go off of here say.
I watched so many interviews with the directors and you could tell how into it they were.
It's like it's an honor to work with franchise like this that did this and I took it as a
responsibility to get it right.
Like if this is going to shape me as a person as an animator in my career, I'm going to
make sure if I get a chance to work on it, which I'm fortunate for to try to do everything
I can to make this as good as I possibly can.
And we spent for holiday on and directing, which is amazing that we got to do.
You know, we put everything into this.
Sometimes they still post on Instagram, the directors and Tony.
And you can tell that they're still upset about it and they have every right to be.
I can't imagine working on a project and basically being done and then being like no one
will ever see it.
And like we've all worked on like little things that never get done.
But to go, I have the budget.
I have the studio backing.
I have everything I could ever want to make this movie.
Yeah.
I think the fact that it was complete is what the heartbreaking part of it is.
The fact that it was canceled through no fault of their own.
It seemed like the production there was no trouble within there.
They weren't inflating the budget.
They didn't run into major rewrites or anything like that.
They didn't have time.
Yeah.
They worked with what they got.
They were handling it well.
It was not a mess and somehow they still got the axe.
Yep.
I have to ask you.
Do you want to see this movie?
Yes.
Yeah.
Where's my candle?
Yeah, grab a candle.
That's what that candle was for.
You just had your answer prepped the whole time.
Yeah.
It is a hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
I want to see Scoob holiday hunt.
Yeah.
No, we're going to put this.
No, my arm put it up here.
Up here.
Front and center.
This is a unanimous.
This is going to be a fun question to keep asking each other for some time.
Sometimes we're going to agree and sometimes we aren't.
If it's a hell no on the back, that'd be great.
Oh my god.
We're going to carve it into the back.
But I think this might be just the most unanimous.
I want to see this movie.
Yes.
I mean, I'm a middleing Scooby fan these days.
It just was such a good script.
And then over time, little things have been leaked here and there.
Animation, stuff like that.
One of the monsters was going to be Krampus.
Yeah.
I love Krampus.
I love Krampus, but I do think I understand the financial logic of the cancellation.
Boo.
I'm very strategic in what I'm saying.
They had the budget issues that like new voice cast, like I said, the original getting mixed
reviews.
If they thought that they could not recoup the money, which they didn't from the first,
the tax break makes a lot of sense.
I don't agree.
There are relationships that are built when you make a movie, the directors, the cast,
the crew, and the audiences.
And between this and they also canceled back girl and Coyote versus Acme, those cancellations
are going to hurt those relationships.
Yeah.
And it's really hard for any artist to then trust the studio that they're going to follow
through on their promise.
If you're going to keep doing that.
And I remember when Zazloth was like making cuts left and right.
And everyone was like, what are you doing?
You are, you are destroying the thing that your company is.
Known for.
Yeah.
Like you are known for making movies, TV shows, and you are tossing it to the side and you
are treating this like it's a, like a firm.
Yeah.
This isn't that.
Yes, you need to run a business, but like you have to make stuff.
Yeah.
He has a quote where he said, we have a different view on the wisdom of releasing direct to
streaming films.
And we've taken some aggressive steps to course correct the previous strategy because
this merger happened in 2022.
I think a lot of this has to go with the pandemic where everybody was releasing things at home.
They're taking aggressive steps to course correct.
We get upset about all of the mergers, which are continuing to happen.
Like we're not done.
There's the state of the industry is a shit show.
We love this industry.
We are in, like I said, a phase where we are throwing everything at the wall and seeing
what sticks in 2020.
The movie was released film and like how we watch film kind of changed forever because of
the pandemic.
Films are delayed.
Movie theaters were closed.
You couldn't go to a theater.
And so the industry had no choice but to pivot.
And that's when our theatrical releases hit streaming.
I mean, was it cool to watch Wonder Woman 1984 in Christmas morning in my PJs with my
peppermint coffee?
It was great.
Sure.
But it wasn't the same.
It's not the same.
And that's what's so important.
I'm glad that we get to have this conversation because it is important, but I am always so
thrown when I travel to anywhere in the country.
And there are so many people who are still out of work.
People look at me and go, well, they're still making movies.
I mean, technically true.
Yep.
However, in 2020, we had roughly 800 movies released in the US in 2023.
Do you know how many?
I'm going to guess half that.
Yeah.
Roughly 500.
Or half.
So you have half of an industry.
Yes, they're still making movies, but like those people who are making those 800 movies,
now you have to try to fit them into a 500 movie box.
And on top of that, they're trying to cut the costs of those productions.
Exactly.
It comes back to the point that you're saying about Scoob and like taking a family to see
it.
Why are you paying $20 for a ticket?
And movie theaters are expensive.
Yes.
And I moved to the South last year.
Like we live in LA, the reverence for movies here, we live in this bubble.
And when you leave the bubble, you see what the rest of the world or at least the rest of
the US, their theaters are really like they are falling apart.
I drove over an hour for barbenheimer because I did research to find the theater that I could
go to.
We live within like three miles of three theaters.
Yeah.
We have three movie theaters, AMC movie theaters.
AMC Stubs brought you by.
Just getting we bush.
All on the same block.
Yeah.
And if we want to, we'd walk there.
We have four theaters.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
That the mentality of movie theaters are definitely different.
And streaming has definitely changed the mentality of how we watch things.
Exactly.
Do you know how big of a TV you can get at home?
So big.
115 inches.
And you can get a projector that goes even bigger.
Yeah.
And in 8K Ultra HD.
And in 8K, we have a lot of different theaters that I was going to were terrible.
Megan stopped seven times.
Oh, geez.
And no one seemed to care.
I get very emotional about this.
We love this industry.
We work in this.
I mean, we're trying to work this industry.
And it's something that we need to talk about and get more people to talk about.
And Scoob, you can be outraged by Scoob getting canceled, but you got to do something about
it.
Like when is the last time you sat and watched a movie and put your phone down?
It's the other thing.
We're not even watching it at home.
We have a second screen in front of us.
Yeah.
It's background.
Right.
Okay.
So attention spans are shorter.
Social media seems to be on the rise forever.
We get it.
We're probably coming to you on social media.
And like you said, the cool thing about theaters, it's not the same.
It's so nice to be in a theater with other people.
Sometimes it sucks.
Sometimes they are on their phone.
Sometimes they are talking and doing things they shouldn't.
But for the majority of the time, the strangers around you help create the environment of
what you're watching.
I know that we love going to a horror movie and hearing someone go, oh, hell no.
Oh, man.
My favorite movie experience still.
One of my favorites is Scene Fall.
Oh my God.
I've never seen people walk out of the theater more than watching that movie.
Right.
Not because it was bad, but because it was terrifying.
Oh, man.
It just, I loved every second of it.
Yeah.
So I went to Wicked last week.
Did people sing along?
No, we were very, very lucky.
Did you had to like hold yourself back?
I'm out to a couple of things.
But like my best friend flew out so we could watch it together because it was that important
to go see the movie in theaters together.
Now, which one of you is Scoob?
Which one of you is Shaggy?
Exactly.
Shaggy is green.
Scooby is pink.
Huh.
I see it.
The theater was packed.
A week after its release, I can't remember the last time I was in a packed theater.
I'm a musical theater kid at heart and it was musicals don't make money.
I now beg to differ.
The right musicals make money.
A musical that sells itself as a musical makes money.
If you try to hide it, wonka and mean girls, then people are going to despise you.
I liked both of those.
I mean.
I'm not saying that they were bad movies.
Well, I'd have my qualms with the meat girl musical.
That's a different podcast over so.
Yeah.
If you're going to do that, sell it as it be in a musical.
Yeah, you can't really.
Don't try to trick us into watching a musical and suddenly we're going to be like, "Oh,
you're right.
I like spontaneous song and dance.
I don't know what I was thinking."
Exactly.
The state of the industry right now, everyone's looking for something that sells.
For a long time, you could make a superhero movie and it would do well.
We are in a superhero fatigue now and I think it's trying to find what's next.
Oh my god.
If it was musicals, let me so happy.
Where wills?
Yes, it's mom's Thursday.
Have you seen how many where-wolf movies are coming out?
So many.
It's like when you see one ant on the ground and then there's a whole flock of them.
Yeah.
Okay.
But Wicked also has two female leads, which is something we don't see enough of.
It has almost a three hour runtime, which is most movies lately.
I saw the runtime and I've seen the Broadway show and was like, "Oh, they're going to mess
up something in there."
And they doomed you.
No, they didn't do me.
I think this was such a good movie.
People wanted to see it.
That's my whole point is people want to go to theaters.
They want that experience.
And when the movie started, this beautiful hush fell over our theater.
I had not felt that way about a movie in theaters since 2018's a quiet place.
And so, and like I said, I guess we were like, "You know what's next?"
There was so much reverence.
It was really a dry eye and I clocked eyes with the woman next to me.
And she just nodded her head and smiled at me.
And I was like, "Ah, connection.
Getting out in the world and being off of our phones was like, this is what theaters are
for three hours.
We can escape the terrifying news of our world, even though that storyline is real close to
our current world."
Because movies evoke fear and hope and all of these sometimes outrage if it's not good.
But we're not alone.
We can be angry and sad that movies aren't making it to the screen, but we have to do something
about it.
We have to recapture that feeling.
Put our phones down and we have to listen to Nicole Kidman.
Tell us that heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
A lot of emotions feel good in a place like this.
We'll make movies better.
So I think the Thanksgiving box office was the biggest unrecorded.
We got hope, trickling in.
And maybe we can prove that movies need to go to box office, like holiday hunt.
And we have options for December 25th, which is Christmas, but also the first night of
Hanukkah.
Oh, I didn't know it was starting on Christmas.
Yeah.
But so I want to talk about movies real quick that are coming out for Christmas and maybe
it'll inspire people to actually go to the theater.
So we've got a gamut of things.
We have a complete unknown, which do you know that is?
That is the Timothy Shalamet as Bob Dylan.
The long, simple.
I'm scared.
Yes, it's the Bob Dylan biopic with Timothy Shamalam.
I will say that the biopic might be the next big thing because have you seen the line
of biopics for like musicians?
No.
We've been in a biopic era for a little bit.
Yeah, but there's going to be like a gluttony of them.
Of course we are.
Yeah.
Like, there's going to be a quadrilogy for the Beatles.
Okay, that makes sense though.
So we've got our biopics covered.
Then we've got Baby Girl, which is the Nicole Kidman Thriller.
50 Shades of Nicole Kidman.
Yeah.
And then Blitz, which is Sarsha Ronin.
I can only say it with Sarsha.
Sarsha.
It's a world war two story about Londoners during the bombing of the British capital.
So we've got history.
Oh, Christmas traditions.
Exactly.
Then we've got the fire inside, which is about American professional boxer Clarissa T-Rex
shields.
I think that's her nickname.
That's her full name.
Did you name her?
No.
Training for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Boxer.
Thanks.
I didn't know that.
I clearly...
She's from Detroit.
Oh my God.
I want to see it even more now.
I watched the trailer for a lot of these when I was writing this stuff down and was like,
"Ooh, this sounds real good."
Okay.
We've got biopic thriller history sports movie.
And then for our horror kids, we've got Nosferatu, the star-studded Gothic table of an
infatuated vampire for the children.
Nosferatu.
Yes.
We've got multiple offerings.
We've got Mufasa, which is the origin story of Mufasa and I think Scar.
And then we've got Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
The video game sequel where they reunite to Battle Shadow.
This movie technically comes out December 20th.
And then there's an anime fantasy set 130 years before the Lord of the Rings books called
The Lord of the Rings, The War of...
Oh God.
Ro...
Nailed it.
How do you say that?
We're here.
Okay, The War of Reherum.
So, my point is over this holiday break, pile the kids, the friends, the people that you
love into the car and please go back to the theater.
Because then we don't have to worry about big company.
We should always worry.
But we don't.
Always worry.
But maybe there's hope that big companies don't need to worry about money so much that we
can keep these smaller movies going.
So Grapp's and Popcorn, maybe Cocktail, The Fy Gravity and whatever a gladiator says.
Stabby stab.
There has been this theory as to why Hallmark movies and Christmas movies have become so
popular.
God you just created such a good segue for me.
And the idea is that it's a movie where if you know the formula, you can kind of just
shut your brain off.
You can be background.
You can kind of fall into it, come out of it whenever you feel like and especially with
family coming home during the holidays.
Like things around the house can get more hectic.
So you focusing on a movie for two hours might not be plausible for you and on top of that,
this is kind of an escape from the news.
But also what has been happening, especially towards the end of the year, we're not really
seeing holiday movies catered to being a holiday movie.
We're seeing movies that are kind of shooting at the end of the year because of the Oscars.
And that's when we get like a ton of Oscar-8 movies.
That's why we get so many biopics because for some reason the academy just like gush over
just like anyone who is acting like a historical figure.
Yeah.
And he loves a biopic for studios are shoving in a musical because I think musical they
think of as family entertainment, which is not always true.
Be very careful how you're taking your young children to go see Wiggen.
But like I remember going to see musicals on Christmas.
Les Mizz was around Christmas.
I want to say-
But that was also an Oscar riddle.
Okay.
Fine.
I want to say rock of ages was also around Christmas.
I don't know.
But I can remember seeing a lot of musicals around Christmas time.
I would I know.
I am not the audience from-
That can.
I am not the audience from musicals and I will admit that.
I am the audience from musicals.
Oscar season is interesting because it doesn't cap off at the end of the year.
It doesn't end it like January.
Something like that.
It's not a calendar year.
But we are starting to see that in the holiday season.
And so now it's time to talk about a homework.
Oh perfect.
So I have created our next segment.
Is it homework?
Ooh.
Okay.
So I am going to quiz Dan with I think four or five movies.
Okay.
And four or five pairings of movies.
And he's got to figure out which one is the homework movie.
Okay.
So is it sugar plum twist or sugar plum kiss?
Sugar plum kiss.
Twist.
Yeah.
Sugar plum twist.
Well it came out in 2021.
After failing to get the role of the sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker, a ballerina
joins forces with a retiree to create her dance with a Latin twist.
I love it.
Yep.
Also, these are going on our homework movies that we're watching.
Okay.
A Christmas in Vermont or a Christmas in Connecticut.
Connecticut.
A Christmas in Vermont.
In 2016, a business woman is sent to shut down one of her company's holdings.
But instead of closing down the iconic firm, she unexpectedly falls in love.
These descriptions I'm pulling straight from homework.
This star is Abigail Hawk, a Zach Ward who I know is a demon and charmed.
Morgan Fairchild who is.
Morgan Fairchild.
Wait, I don't.
Chandler's mom.
Oh yeah.
And none other than Chevy Chase.
Oh.
Christmas in Connecticut, which is not the homework movie is from 1945.
That was founded I guess in 1951, countdown to Christmas for homework didn't begin until
2009.
Christmas in Connecticut though, I feel like is where they pulled a lot of inspiration.
An unmarried city magazine writer who pretends to be a farmwife and mother falls in love with
a returning war hero.
Good.
So there was a 1992 remake of this movie directed by the Terminator.
After he did jingle all the way, he's like, I'm determined to make the best Christmas.
This was preaching all the way.
Whoa.
Yeah, maybe he found inspiration in it too.
Engle all the way.
Amazing.
It is a surprising fact that there's a lot of homework Christmas movies based on a book.
Mm-hmm.
See that's the thing.
And the next coming year, I'm going to do a novel.
And then the next coming year, I'm going to make a movie based on my own novel.
That's how you get in, folks.
Okay.
Big city girl moves to Georgia.
Oh my god.
I can write a biopic.
So Hanukkah on Rye or Hanukkah on the rocks?
On the rocks.
It's a trick question.
They're both homework.
I had to include both because it's so good.
So Hanukkah on the Rye is in 2022.
A matchmaker connects two deli owners during Hanukkah, but their new romance gets put to the
test when they realize they're competing against each other.
I love it.
This starts Jeremy Jordan of Broadway fame.
Or if you've seen the last five years with Anna Kendrick, I'm getting my musical kids
in there.
He's got a voice like a god.
I hope he sings in it.
I'm so going to watch it.
And then Hanukkah on the rocks is coming this year, a week before Hanukkah, recently unemployed
lawyer Tori embarks on a journey to find Hanukkah candles leading her to a Chicago bar, where
she transforms the holiday spirit, discovered love and finds courage to pursue a new path in
life.
So disgusting.
I love it.
Christmas is December 25th, December 26th.
Second night of Hanukkah is what we're doing.
And our final duo.
Have you ever been Christ or Chris Cringled?
Chris Cringled.
It's never been Christ.
What?
Right?
I will tell you that as much of these movies that I watch, which is an unhealthy amount,
I can never tell you the names of any of these movies.
There is one movie that I remember in particular, and that is Christmas spirit.
Oh my God.
And that's because I have a theory.
I'm convinced that the Christmas ghost or whatever of Christmas present killed the
girl, like poisoned her in her sleep, would them to be together forever.
So the reason that you like this movie and remember it is because there's me or there.
The only home mark movie that has murder in it.
So never been Christ came out last year, home for the holidays, BFFs, Naomi and Liz reconnect
with high school crush, Chris Silver.
It complex love triangle forms, forcing them to take stock of their lives and find the
value of friendship.
I love it.
So this was really fun for me to do.
Mainly because I was like, I can't remember because you are of the two of us, the bigger
home mark fan.
And I was like, I can't remember if he's going to know these titles or not.
Oh, definitely not.
But I really wanted to do like a music one, but I couldn't put lyrics in and find a home
mark movie that didn't get made.
Because they all get made.
They're not on this podcast for a reason.
I will say because I used to listen to Deck the Home Mark podcast and they've talked to
Oh my god.
I didn't know that was a thing.
That's amazing.
I've since stopped listening to them because.
Why?
Oh, you're going to explain.
So sorry.
So they review every single home mark holiday movie that comes out.
I mean, that's a full time job.
And over the years, it's just become more and more and more to the point where like they
have to come out with a new show every day starting from like Halloween.
Yeah.
And it just became too much to like keep up.
And if I had them in my feed, it would just like, it would probably be listening to.
Yeah.
And it just like came to the same points every single time.
It's all formulaic.
There's one guy who like he loves home mark movies.
One guy who's like kind of if he and one guy that despises it and it's just always the
same opinion over and over and over again.
It's three dudes.
Yeah.
What a brilliant.
And it's a great thing to say.
But they have been interviewing people who are involved with home mark Christmas movies.
Whether it be the actors, they had the editor of some of those movies as well.
But they also brought in a writer for it.
I forget who the writer was, but they were talking through the process of getting Greenlit,
or getting a one of their Christmas movies Greenlit.
And it's not that they don't get made.
But like, home mark kind of comes through it and just like waters it down.
You can't like go too far.
Like even the editor was like trying to put in more special effects, try to jazz things
up in there.
And the producer came in and was like, no, no, no, you don't have to do this.
This is going to be streaming in like a week.
And like you don't need to put that much effort into it.
And we'll have another one streaming the next day.
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
They know their formula.
At least they're branching out now.
We have same sex couples and Hanukkah, which for a long time, we didn't.
So that's great.
But like they know exactly what they're doing.
I'm sure their budget has got to be the exact same for every single movie.
It's about two million dollars per episode or two million dollars per movie.
Honestly, it really is just for episode.
They have a Christmas season each year and it is, they have a holiday season each year.
I mean, you think about it like the efficiency of it.
It is a could be like a 90 minute movie that with commercials could be stretched out to
two and a half hours.
Like that is a good chunk of programming right there.
And you think about like a television show.
And the budget that goes into just one episode of a television show that is going to be
on for a half an hour to maybe an hour.
And the budget for that is far higher than what they're making these homeic Christmas
moments.
I was going to say it wasn't game of thrones like 15 million in episode.
It was about 10 million in episode.
I mean, but I think we're also going to stop having those massive budget things.
Yeah.
So we've done our home mark segment now onto our top three holiday movie recommendations.
And why we continue to watch them year after year.
Let's go backwards.
Backwards.
Yeah, so what's your third favorite?
I am going to go with the Grinch, the one with Jim Carey.
That's my number two.
And I remember this finally because when I was much younger when the movie came on theaters
like all of us as a family we get to see that movie together and see core memories going
to the theaters and my dad.
He was one of the early adopters of a DVD player back when it's not that old of a movie is
it's 2002 right?
It was one of the first DVDs we ever bought because the DVD case was green.
It kind of became this unofficial tradition that my aunt uncle would come over.
We'd have Christmas dinner lunch.
It was like three in the afternoon and then after things were winding down.
And just again that's dinner.
And we would just pop in the Grinch just because it just we all enjoy that movie really
love that movie and it's really funny.
I mean, I know that movie is so quotable.
I know for a fact that there was one Christmas where Laura made it a different saying her
Facebook status every day for the month of December.
And you would think that eventually you would run out of like Grinch statements and you
just don't know it's so good.
That's my number two.
Okay.
So it's your number three.
I had to for my number two.
We'll get there.
My number three is it's a wonderful life.
And this is a very similar reasoning to you where Christmas Eve we eat.
We make white Russians.
We all gather around the TV and we watch it's a wonderful life.
And there was one year where we had a few too many cocktails and decided that we were all
going to stand up and do the Charleston.
And so like now every year that I am not back in Michigan, I will watch it and get up
and do the Charleston by myself just because it's such a good memory.
I think it was you who told me that it's a wonderful life almost wasn't like a big
Christmas movie.
It wasn't meant to be a Christmas movie like even a little bit.
It's kind of one of those movies that fall under is it a Christmas movie or a movie that
takes place during Christmas and it's one of those movies that takes place during Christmas.
But it's because of the copyright.
So because the movie was not.
Because it lapsed.
Yeah, because the movie was not big and the studio behind it getting away from the point.
The point is that it was a movie that the studio was not.
Liberty films, which is paramount.
Sorry.
It was a movie at all because it wasn't successful.
And they just didn't think to like renew the copyright for it.
So what a time to be live when it like ended suddenly all of a sudden these TV stations realize
we are looking for something for a programming programming costs a lot of money or like in
the right for it.
And then they found this little movie called It's a Wonderful Life and they're like, oh,
we can like fill that for the next two plus hours and like all of these.
We're a marathon.
A lot of stations were doing like a It's a Wonderful Life all day.
Yeah, because it costs nothing to do it.
And because of that, it just entered the zeitgeist of like, it's a Wonderful Life is now
associated with being a Christmas in a holiday movie.
Yeah, it came out in 1946.
The patent expired in 1974.
Yep.
So very recent history.
And also it is one of those things that has grown with me of like, you want the moon?
I'll give you the moon.
It's a fun.
Also, just straight up romance movie, although he turns into like being a jerk at some point.
Have you seen It's a Wonderful Life?
Did I feel like I forced you to watch it at some point?
We've watched a few times.
I remember we watched the colorize version of it and that was weird.
I've done that once and then again.
What is your number two?
My number two is kind of a two for but they're both kind of the same movie.
It is home alone and home alone too.
Ah, I didn't put home alone on the list and I was like heartbroken about it.
This is another one of those.
That's a two for.
Yeah, that connects me back to my childhood and I remember my dad saying that while I was
watching home alone, never have I ever laughed so hard as a child and as an adult at a
movie.
As soon as the like traps are set, I'm good to go.
It's so good.
That is the first movie I ever watched with Bing when I got him.
Oh, fun.
You see it with like that's our Christmas.
You're my boy and I'll never leave you home alone.
Bing is my dog.
So I did say that Jim Carrey's Grinch was my second but I also said "Campus" and then I
wrote "Don't make me decide I can't make it."
I debated putting Cranpas on the list.
It's so good.
I will say even though it's not in the top three, it's definitely in the top ten.
We saw that movie.
I think it was far past Christmas.
I saw it in the sticky floor theater in the middle.
Yes.
So there is a cheap theater where usually where movies that are past its theatrical run.
Is it still there?
I have not checked.
I was going to say that might have been one that went by the way side of the pandemic.
Yeah.
So we had seen this movie just on a whim.
We were just like "Campus, horror, Christmas movie."
It was just something to do and then we walked out of the movie and we looked at each other
and we were like "Was that a good movie?"
It was a great movie and it is a horror movie technically.
But our old roommate who is not a horror movie person loves it.
In fact this year was like that's how I start my Christmas season.
I was like "Okay."
In terror.
It is very well written.
The visual effects, like the more I learn about visual effects, the more into this movie
I am.
And I got to say it has one of the best openings of a movie ever.
Not even Christmas.
Not even a lot of the time.
Yeah it is a shame that that movie is not more well known but it is one of the best Christmas
movies ever made.
And it is not as scary as some people may think.
Yeah.
Number one.
What is your number one?
I told you there was a movie you couldn't put on this list.
Yes.
But I feel like you are going to be equally upset.
Oh.
What is that?
I don't know what it is.
What is that grin?
It is terrifying.
My favorite Christmas movie of all time.
A Muffet Christmas girl.
No, although another one, top ten.
I only did three for time's sake and no one wants us to recap all of these but there are
many other really good ones.
Again, you will be upset with me.
Batman returns.
I don't know that I am upset with you.
Have I seen it?
Is it with the penguins?
Yeah.
Okay.
I am a shelf-lifer.
Oh, then I guess I have totally seen it.
I was young when they came out.
So I get them confused because we weren't a big movie family.
I didn't see these until I was older and now outside of the Mr. Freeze one, they all blur
together.
Aren't there big Christmas ornaments in the movie?
It takes place during Christmas.
I'm choosing my words very carefully.
The penguins there for the Christmas tree lighting.
Right.
It's not just set in Christmas.
There is an activity that is Christmas based in the movie.
It is a Christmas movie.
Oh, but you are still going to get me later.
I'm not mad at that.
I also wouldn't be mad.
I know there is a different movie that I told you you couldn't put on your list, which
will get to in a moment, put your hand down.
Mine number one is the Santa Claus.
All right.
I think it is one of my early movie going experiences that I fully remember outside of Jurassic
Park because I should have been terrified.
I still watch that movie to this day.
I don't know.
It makes me feel like a kid again and I like the weenie whistle at the end in the mystery
date game where you get to be an adult and the Christmas magic is still there.
Also they've made 65 sequels, so the magic lives on.
I watch everyone of them with the light.
There is so much heart to that movie and they are divorced, so it is not the typical.
Let's gather around the table and be this picture perfect family Christmas, which I think
is why I really like it.
Okay.
What is the movie that I told you you couldn't put on your list?
Die Hard 3 with inventions.
No, no, no.
Oh.
It is just die hard.
First die hard movie.
Okay.
And this has been the ongoing debate.
I know Bruce Willis.
This is Christmas tradition that you're witnessing came out that said it's not a Christmas movie.
It's Bruce Willis.
Yeah.
Oh.
That's one of them.
Okay.
This is a feel like a tradition that we have done every year where we argue about whether
is a Christmas movie or not and every year with the argument just somehow fizzles.
It's not a Christmas movie.
Okay.
Granted I haven't seen it in a very long time.
Go on.
Why is it not a Christmas movie?
There are rules that someone made that I remember listening to at one point.
Number one, Bruce Willis to say it's not a Christmas movie.
Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
It's a Bruce Willis movie.
That's like Harrison Ford making up lore for Star Wars.
But he's not making up lore.
He's making a statement as someone who worked on the film.
Okay.
Two.
I don't ever remember anything Christmas about this movie.
Someone has told me there's an office holiday party happening.
Again, let's go back to Batman Returns.
I've seen it probably around the same time I saw Die Hard.
I have distinct memories of the penguin of Christmas ornaments of this Christmas tree.
So it is a conically thrown in Christmas stuff.
All I remember from Die Hard is Severus Snape and Bruce Willis being inside a heating
vent.
Come to the coast.
We'll have a good time.
Right.
You could have thrown a Christmas line in there.
Are all of the Die Hard to Christmas movie?
No.
Okay.
So why is Die Hard to Christmas movie?
Okay.
Right off the bat, the first song that we hear is a Christmas song.
Which song is it?
It's by Run DMC.
It is.
Yeah.
But is there a Christmas rap?
Christmas in Hollis.
Is it?
Yeah, by Run DMC.
I love that song.
So that's the first song that we get over the title, not over the title, but when Bruce Willis
is being limoed into there.
Limoed in.
Yeah, he is in a limo.
God, I need to re-watch this movie.
But he also shows that he's like a very humbled person.
He's not used to being in this life of luxury and he actually sits up in the front with
the limo driver.
That's amazing.
He's like, have a good conversation with him.
The driver says that this is the first time he's ever done this is the first client.
He's had to work or like drive.
The driver is Reginald Val Johnson, right?
I don't remember.
From Family Maverick?
No, he is the cop.
Oh, there it is.
He just did a thing on Dancing with the Stars.
That's why.
There's also the part where he kills one of the terrorists.
He takes the gun and on his sweater when he like lowers him down into the like party
area.
So hello, now a machine gun.
Wait, he writes that?
Yeah.
The reason why I think this to be a Christmas movie is because so much about Christmas, the
meaning of Christmas, which is now interpreted in many holiday films is like to be around
family.
Family, loved ones, all that stuff.
And we know that John McLean has had a troubled relationship with his wife when she works
for this company.
She decides to use her maiden last name instead of using his last name.
They have kids that are involved and he's just wanting to they have kids.
I don't remember them having kids.
They have two kids.
So they have maybe I just need to watch this.
And he is coming over from New York City to the West Coast, trying to just be with his
family, trying to be with his, they're in the process of being divorced.
That I remember.
Yeah, so you have a family who is like kind of similar to the Santa Claus.
Yeah, they're, they're fractured.
They're just trying to figure things out.
And Hans Gruber just gets in the way of that.
So really it's Hans Gruber's fault.
But in the end, he overcomes those obstacles, overcomes the broken glass, destroys the
terrorists and is able to be reunited with his wife.
You have the guy from Family Matters.
Who is also in a rocky relationship.
He is in a position in his job where like he doesn't feel confident anymore.
And through him talking with Bruce Wallace, he is consoled and is told like you can get
off of that fear at the very end when like the terrorist comes out and he's able to like
shoot him instead of like making mistakes like he did before.
He finally makes the right decision and that is a Christmas miracle.
Okay, that is not a Christmas miracle.
That I will put my foot down.
Okay, I see your valid points because there is a holiday setting.
They say Merry Christmas or happy holidays or whatever, right?
A lot.
Okay, so those two things are definitely there.
I guess there's holiday like visuals of like the, I don't remember the holiday party
enough.
I mean, that's what gets him there is that they are having a, I thought he wanted to
talk to his wife.
I didn't think he was there for the party.
No, he was ushered into the party from the company, but sorry, I forget her name, but like,
the wife.
Yeah, but she wanted him to be there and they like pulled out all the stops to be like,
yeah, we're going to make sure that he gets here.
Oh, it's Bonnie Badella.
She plays Holly.
Oh, festive.
Now, I'm surprised that you didn't put this in part of one of your arguments and I'm
going to, I guess, support your claim because do you know when the movie was released?
No, but it doesn't.
It does it.
Mm-hmm.
July.
Oh, it's a summer blockbuster.
Yeah, there it is.
Oh, my God.
No, my whole thing while I love to tell you it's not a Christmas movie.
Again, if it brings people joy and makes them feel something around the holidays, by
all means, like you can watch whatever you want.
It is, you know, like you said, the feeling of family and like that kind of thing, it
does not evoke nor has it once ever for me evoked any sort of holiday spirit.
Like, if someone's like, what's the theme of die hard?
It's not Christmas.
I mean, Christmas is kind of a hard theme to be a theme.
Okay, what's the theme of the Grinch finding the magic of Christmas?
What is the theme of Santa Claus?
Job security?
Yes.
Even Krampus, you can feel like, oh, like that is the family sort of theming behind it.
It is the wanting to be with family.
It is the magic of Christmas.
There's no magic in die hard.
It is, I mean, it is kind of a miracle that he is able to survive so many injuries.
But that's like an everyday miracle.
That's not a Christmas miracle, you know what I'm saying?
See, like if the movie would have ended and you would have, like, like, acknowledged Santa
Claus, I think I would have bought it.
I needed some sort of magic.
You bring up a good point because with Hallmark Christmas movies, one of the elements in
there needs to be some sort of magic.
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing about this season, right?
Even with Hanukkah, it's the eight days, the oil stayed lit, right?
For eight days, which is why you light the candle every night.
There is an inherent magic in that.
Light represents like hope.
Christmas, Kwanza, Duwale, Hanukkah.
Paganism.
You will, right?
You'll as the pagan three birth of the sun.
Yeah, like there is a hope and light.
I don't know, it's just magical and I can find that in almost all Christmas movies or all
holiday movies.
I can't find that in die hard.
At the very end, because of the ash, it kind of looks like it's snowing.
How is that hope and light?
The terrorists are gone.
We can go about living our lives.
The top of the building when it explodes looked like a candle.
Well, it was John and Holly, like, finally reuniting and Holly, like, really seen value
in John after being so disgusted by him for so long.
You could say the same thing about Santa Claus.
This is my favorite debate every year that we've wind up like having.
And somehow it's slightly different every year.
We will stay on our own sides.
We agree to disagree.
No, we don't.
If we did, we wouldn't keep arguing.
I'm trying to find the magic of Christmas within this debate.
And it is that we watch movies, we eat food, we drink a little bit, we all agree to disagree.
A little bit.
Quiet.
As is the holiday spirit.
As per tradition.
I am going to rewatch it though.
Good.
Maybe my argument will change next year.
Stay tuned.
[Applause]
[Water running]
So this is our holiday special where we have cried about holiday haunt not happening and
understanding the state of the industry and why things happened the way that they sort
of happened.
Point is, go see a movie.
Is there ever in a movie that you saw lately in theaters?
I mean, it's "Size Wicked."
Have you seen one?
I recently saw a glad eater too.
Oh, cool.
How was it?
Because I haven't seen it yet.
I found it interesting, fascinating, intriguing, partly because we did an episode on the
Unmade Gladiator 2 and I knew so many of the pitfalls that the sequel and/or prequel kept falling
into the way that they introduced the story and actually set it up to be more glad eater fights.
I thought was very clever.
I don't know what it is with Ripley Scott lately where he's looking at history books and
he's like, "Yeah, fuck that."
Not too many.
Yeah, but like gladiators and sharks.
I know not historically accurate.
I'm here all day for it.
It's so much fun.
Yeah, I'm not here.
Oh, granted.
I don't know that I've ever seen the first gladiator, which is, I've had time.
You don't want to put your hand through a field of wheat?
Field of dreams?
Wheat.
I love that interview.
Someone asked him why there were sharks and he's like, "Because they were there."
And I was like, "That is."
That is not true.
It wasn't that sharks were there.
It was like, "Well, the ocean's there."
And I was like, "That technically correct."
I haven't seen it.
I'm actually really excited for it.
I could talk about Wicked all day long.
I'm going to see that like six more times.
I really do as someone who has read the book and seen the Broadway show multiple times.
It is one of the best adaptations.
I think it's the best musical movie adaptation.
I think it is, I know.
Big claim.
Chicago is really good and I also love Chicago.
But there is something about this movie that I went in with low expectations and I ugly
cried through most of it because I was just like, "Oh, this is everything I wanted it
to be."
So we're going to wrap things up.
Go see a movie.
Is there anything you want to plug before I go into our...
No, we should just do a happy holidays to the camera.
Cuck a cat.
Go see a movie.
And we appreciate you.
I keep thinking that this is like our last one for the year, but technically we'll have
one more.
Stay tuned for our next episode, but have a safe and happy holiday.
Mary Halloween.
Happy Honda Days.
I celebrate Toyota Thon.
Okay.
Honda Days.
Yeah.
If you want to check out more of what we have, we have our Patreon, that is patreon.com/howdidthisnotgetmadepodcast.
You get to see the full video recording of our sessions.
You'll get to get some bonus content, especially with us watching movies.
So we're going to start and set up those watch parties eventually.
Also this episode will be trimmed down.
Significantly.
And you can see the unedited, mostly unedited version.
Mostly unedited.
Mostly.
There are times where I get up and just like turn the camera off and on, but he just leaves.
Yeah.
I just go home, take a lunch break, come back.
I mean, it's real convenient.
Yeah.
So you can check out out on our Patreon.
We have just one tier.
That is our $5 tier with that.
You also get ad free episodes.
So all those ads that you're listening to during this episode, imagine listening to those
episodes again, but without ads.
And that's what you get on our Patreon.
If you cannot support us financially on our site, we totally get it.
Times are hard.
Yeah.
It's the holiday season.
You'd rather spend that money on gifts.
I get it.
I would do the same thing.
There are other ways that you can support us.
You can follow us on our social media.
We are at how did this not get made on our Instagram and TikTok.
The talk.
Yep.
We are no longer on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
We have since moved that over to blue sky.
It's under the same handle at HDT NGM where we're basically going to be operating
in the same way that we did on Twitter, but just on blue sky.
And then if you have any suggestions, the number one way to do it now, I can actually say
this is on our Patreon.
You can actually put in a suggestion there and we will vote on it for the season finale.
But if you just want to generally give us a suggestion, you can send us an email.
That is at not get made at gmail.com.
That'll do it for our episode.
Go and find David Zazloff until he...
No, don't!
Oh, it was such a...
Even keeled episode.
So that'll do it for our episode.
Go see a movie.
Convention Family to see a movie.
Save your family.
Go see a movie.
And happy Honda days.
Happy Toyota Thun.
Christmas Alicia!
[Pierre gasp]