Hallmark "Open" to Making Gay Holiday Movies. Snowflakes Melt

No. Bland cinematography. Bad acting. We already have tons of gay films like that. Hallmark is just fine as is.

R1 what are you trying to say about TLA and Dekkkoo?? Which still sounds like a Star Wars villain to me

[quote] “It’s not always that simple a process where you put the word out and you get back three great scripts and three great stories,” he explains. “We put the word out that we’re doing an original series and we get 50 bad stories.”

Considering the movies that actually get made, that must be really saying something.

How can you fuck up such a simple premise that's been done a million times already?

Someone tell the flyover fraus that many of these "films" are written by, directed by, and/or starring gay men

Hallmark looks for new scripts? It's like the 3 same movie premises just rotated with a new cast.

It’s clearly IMMINENT, not eminent.

And, really - who cares what Todd Starnes, this single biggest closet queen on the East Coast thinks? You should look for clips of her mincing, hand-wringing Great Aunt Agatha routine. She *hisses*

"The Smell of Christmas Cookies"

Niles has inherited his grandmother's famous bakery in Vermont. He has no idea what to do, or how to modernize the ancient baking equipment and eating area. The town's part-time mayor , Philip, stops by the store to welcome him to the neighborhood and encourage him to revitalize the local treasure. Philip, a former QVC host, has long aspired to be an independent interior designer, and his twin sister, Zori, is an accomplished artisan baker.

Philip cannot wait for Niles to meet Zori and her "best friend," RoBerta, who is a master mechanic and landscaper. Philip is sure that if the "Fab Four" put their heads together they can put The Rainbow Bakery back on the Christmas map of Vermont.

"Christmas Filling"

Derek Button, who left his small town to pursue his dream of being a pastry chef in the big city, returns home to help his widower father, John, run the family's ailing diner.

Having been away for so many years, Derek is out of his element with small town life until local rutabaga farmer Luke Deer helps him navigate the quirky town and remember why the town is so special.

When local real estate bigwig Dexter Steel decides he wants to build a fast food franchise on the location of John's diner, Derek is at a loss as to how he can prove to the mayor that the diner is a special landmark and should not be handed over to Dexter.

Derek decides to enter the annual "Best Dish In Town" competition to prove that local food and home cooking is better than fast food. But what dish can he present that is special and captures the local spirit of the town?

Derek's widowed mother Grace has a secret rutabaga pie recipe that has been handed down from generation to generation. She's always been too shy to enter her pie in any competitions until John convinces her that her love and family history can easily win the blue ribbon!

Can Grace's recipe help save the diner? With Luke's prize winning rutabaga's, Graces recipe, Derek's baking skills and John's gumption, the whole family comes together to save the diner--and find love!

This can be done.

This [italic]should[/italic] be done.

So, Hallmark—get it done!

Please... they have the most faggoty actors playing almost all of the love interests in their shitty holiday lifetime quality movies that I see playing every time I go visit my grandma.

I'm thankful for the Hallmark Channels. Just like the Teletubbies transfix toddlers and keep them occupied the Hallmark Channels keep my bickering old parents quiet and our of my hair. No other tv show or station does that.

They get a lot of bad scripts..........which they then produce into bad movies. Seriously, the scripts are horrible. I'd have to be brain dead to watch that crap.

I won't be holding my breath. I call BS.

I've been in a Hallmark Christmas movie before and working on script pitches for Christmas 2020.

Everybody saw my film, I was surprised. It wasn't brilliant but they are harmless fun and I want to make another one.

R16 Is that you, Kathie Lee Epstein Gifford?

Gee, wouldn't this be considered political correctness run amok or is this OK with a lot of you guys who go off when other minorities are actually humanized or don't like jokes being made at their expense?

I mean you do realize that's what those flyover types are thinking. Gays ruining Christmas movies falls under "political correctness."

Try to communicate simply and efficiently, r18...like a Hallmark Christmas movie!

It'll never happen. I'll stick with Freeform if I want anything gay related.

Nice script treatment, R10 but how in the hell does Derek have a widowed father AND and widowed mother. I guess it's possible if they were once married to each other, divorced, and then remarried and their subsequent spouses died. But it seems like a clunky set up.

That Passionflix streaming service that produces films based on romance novels did a gay short last Christmas called "Wrapped Up in You."

Too bad no one will ever see it R22

Apart from Luke MacFarlane who are the other gay Hallmark stars?

R24 Peter Porte has appeared in about a half-dozen Hallmark movies. This one just premiered a couple weeks ago.

Wow, r22! Thanks so much for sharing about that streaming service! Don't recall ever hearing about it before, but looked it up and LOVE IT!

Personally, I don't care if Hallmark never makes gay or lesbian movies or diversifies in any way. Cause are they really obligated to? What they do works for them, and they have a very specific audience that loves it. Why spoil it for that audience?

There are enough channels and outlets these days, catering to all sorts of niche markets. No need to make a channel fit some mainstream desire or expectation. Just go to another channel, I say.

Don't forget about bisexual or lesbo Catherine Bell who has done a gazziollion Good Witch movies and the TV show for Hallmark.

We need to start on the script, girls. Our BILL TAYLOR, longing for love returns to his hometown for Christmas only to find...

R21 I fucked up. Grace is Luke's mother.

This gives me hope for next year's lineup:

Christmas Cornhole in Connecticut

I'll Be Homo for Christmas

We Three Queens

It Came Upon A Midnight Queer

The Twelve Gays of Christmas

Up On The Bathhouse Top

If they ever do make gay holiday movies they will be squeaky clean like their straight couple movies. IIRC, there are little to no sex scenes in Hallmark movies.

Oh, please. "We haven't found the right script" is obviously code for "Of course we're not letting these faggots be in our movies, not in a million years!". But I will give the guy props for wording it in a way that wouldn't get him cancelled. He may be a homophobe, but he clearly ain't dumb.

Prancer & Vixen

Two reindeer wranglers compete to have theirs in the town's livestock show and end up falling for each other.

So succinct yet visceral, R33 Original, too.

The problem obviously isn't the fact that they haven't gotten the right script. You'd have to be an idiot to buy that. It's because they don't want gays being associated with their frau christian aesthetic.

There's an entire genre of fiction in MM Romance Novels directed primarily to fraus with many many titles that could be turned into TV movies (if they wanted).

If they make any lesbo movies, I'm sure Catherine Bell will ask for a role right away.

[quote] Original, too.

We don't like original.

There's plenty of adaptable material out there. Fraus love this gay holiday stuff. Goodreads has 340 in the M/M Christmas category.

Gay actor Nick Hounslow already does Christmas movies, I'm sure he'd love to do one that's gay.

I doubt Hallmark will ever make a gay Christmas movie. But, I wouldn't be surprised if Lifetime ends up making a few gay holiday movies. In the 90s and early 2000s, they made several gay and lesbian theme movies like Any Mother's Son The Truth About Jane, What Makes A Family and that weird movie where Jean Smart plays a woman who finds out her husband is gay. I also miss the days when Lifetime and LMN used to reair gay themed TV movies that had originally aired on broadcast networks. I remember seeing An Early Frost and Doing Time On Maple Drive a bunch of times on those channels.

Of course, Lifetime is all about making movies about psycho girlfriends or boyfriends in the non-holiday months. But, I can see making gay themed holiday movies or maybe they'll go back to making gay drama movies again.

Maybe we'll see more obviously gay BFFs in these movies, like Jonathan Bennett in A Christmas Kiss 2.

You can tell a lot of their movies are filmed in the middle of summer with fake snow. It's in the way the sun is too bright.

R43 They probably reuse the same sets and fake snow up in Canada every summer. I loved that cut SNL sketch that made fun of Hallmark movies.

R40 Maybe Nick and Peter (R25) can be cast in a movie together since they are exes IRL. "Ex-boyfriends have to put their animosity aside and work together to make their best friend's last Christmas special."

R44 - that's every Hallmark Christmas movie in one SNL sketch.

Hallmark will only make movies with Steppin' Fetchit gays: the kind who are hyper feminized, trivialized and second bananas to an all-knowing woman, probably a veterinarian or pediatric oncologist. You know ,something where the woman is always the hero. On Hallmark, gays have no role. It's a right wing company. Most of their PAC contributions (by a 2:1 margin) go to Republicans.

[quote]I doubt Hallmark will ever make a gay Christmas movie.

Because of the article linked at OP, you have to wonder if they'll feel compelled to do at least one at some point. They can't hide behind the "we haven't been able to find a good script for a gay-themed movie" forever and eventually may have to put up or shut up.

As we say in the south, "They're fixin' to do some talkin".

By flying a test balloon, they can now stall by claiming "there just aren't quality scripts for this project". Voila. Fig leaf!

"Don We Now Our Gay Apparel"

Down-on-his luck and perpetually single New Yorker Thad Berryman (Billy Magnusson) inherits his late "bachelor uncle's" men's apparel store in the small but beautiful town of Moon Dreams, CT, and decides to make a go of it. But can he manage to outfit the local citizenry for the annual Christmas ball--and in doing so attract the attention of dreamy local real estate magnate Bolt McChisel (Luke Evans)? Also starring Judith Light as Thad's mother Mrs. Berryman, and Awkwafina as Thad's best friend from the city, Sassy.

I love the SNL spoof at r44 with the New York City rich boyfriend calling the heroine: "C'mon, c'mon, pick up... it's either me or Christmas, Lydia..."

...

R48 One issue for Hallmark would be there conservative Christian fans. Those fans praise Hallmark for making "clean" entertainment. They would go fucking nuts if a gay movie was made and aired on Hallmark.

ION, like Lifetime, also makes "Christmas Movies" and they are equally deplorable. My favorites are by schlockmaster Fred Olen Ray.

My favorite ION Christmas movie was "Christmas Twister." ION didn't make it but picked it up from Indie trash heaven and showed it for several years. Half the cast gets blown away or flattened by flying railroad cars or such.

[quote]Bill Abbott, CEO of the Hallmark Channel, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the company is “open” to making movies featuring LGBTQ leads and storylines, it just hasn’t received the right script… yet...We are always encouraging people to bring us stories across the board,” he added

They literally have one script where they change the names of the leads and the name of the woman's small hometown to which she MUST escape during the holidays to recover from her breakup, absent boyfriend, hectic high-powered job, or save her family business.

They should do one where a gay couple tells off some homophobic bakery

I saw Christmas at the Plaza yesterday with Ryan Paevey. Sweet Jesus that one wins the contest for best looking hunk in a Hallmark movie. The movie, as usual, was hokey and predictable but I couldn't take my eyes off that man. Do a gay one with him, Hallmark!

I know for a fact that Dan Amboyer would be willing to star in any future gay Hallmark movie

Nick Hounslow and Ryan Paevey are hot!

Ryan Paevey must be a go to for Hallmark hunks

Ryan Paevey is perfection. He has age appropriate wrinkles on his face (not in a rough way), beautiful lips and is tall with muscles. Man he is dreamy...

Paevey is very good looking and in great shape.

The Twelve Power Bottoms of Christmas

Santa Claus Is Coming Straight Up Your Ass

Make the Yuletide Gay, a new Hallmark film coming to you this year!

So they're just remaking existing movies? R64

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, starring Brian J. Smith and Matt Bomer. Featuring music by Shawn Mendes

"The Bishop's Husband" starring Nick Hounslow as Bishop Henry "Hank" Brougham, Peter Porte as Julian Brougham, and Ryan Paevey as everyone's favorite angel, Dudley.

^ Directed by Bryan Singer

Maybe Hallmark can give me my comeback role!

Kevin Spacey stars in "The Prettiest Altar Boy" as a relocated priest who takes over a charming stone chapel in a rural parish in Vermont. All the young people have relocated to the big city, and there is a dearth of altar boys to perform the necessary task. Father O'Shaughnessy calls his friend, Ken Sunshine, to help by staging a "Singer Boys" choir competition, with free bus fare and $100 for all participants.

R68 If Singer were directing, he'd want to turn the couple's 6-year old daughter into a 16-year old son.

Christmas Twister is fabulous. I think it was released theatrically under a different title and ION showed it under the Christmas Twister title. The person who got hit by the flying railroad car was the TV station's vicious, backstapping weatherman, modeled on Ted Baxter, who insisted on going up to the roof to cover the tornado live.

^ Er, backstabbing, not backstapping, of course.

r70, love it!

[quote]the company is “open” to making movies featuring LGBTQ leads and storylines, it just hasn’t received the right script… yet.

What are they talking about? They could have cast two men as the leads in any of their current movies instead of a man and woman. They just don't want to make a gay Christmas movie because they know that a lot of their Christian frau fanbase will cause a stink and threaten a boycott.

If they ever do it, Luke MacFarlane will probably be one of the leads, since he's currently in some of their movies and he's openly gay. He's in a new one this year called “Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen."

They should just remake "Meet Me in St. Louis"

The Bukkake Buche de Noel.

If Hallmark needs a script, they should look at Drill My Hole's "Ghosts of Christmas" series for inspiration. Perhaps they could collaborate on an update of this or some other classic

Silent Night, Queeny Night - with Robert Gant, Connor Jessup, and Alec Mapa

Good Queen Wenceslaus - with Joey Pollari and Colton Haynes. Soundtrack by Jim Brickman.

The Feast of Stephen - Stephen Grant (John Barrowman) who runs a cozy B&B in Stockbridge, Massachusetts prepares for a holiday feast where he will introduce his crazy younger bf (Russell Tovey) to his uptight and conservative parents (James Brolin and Swoosie Kurtz)

Relevant...

They should be called One Million Cunts

They wish they had a million. .. It's hilarious how "One Million Moms" has less than 4,000 followers on Twitter, and was only able to get 10,000 signatures for their campaign against "Parents" magazine earlier this year when they featured a gay (male) couple on the cover.

Maybe the "million" represents pounds. 4,000-10,000 fat moms = one million lbs.

The Christmas Shues

When worried college freshman Peter Shue races home for the holidays to help save the family's ceramic mug business from an estranged scheming uncle, he doesn't foresee his truck plowing into a ditch along the way.

Luckily, an offer of a ride by a lone traveler coincidently headed in the same direction has Peter back on his journey to Hershey Heights and brimming with hopes of a family reunited.

R82/R84, the linked Boy Butter ad aired last spring (-ish?) on the Hallmark Channel during a Saturday night movie. I thought it might have been one of those "accidents in the control room" situations, but it aired in the same time slot several Saturdays in a row. Even now, searching for it on the internet resulted in just a couple of threads of moms complaining about its inappropriateness and/or wondering how to explain it to their child(ren).

[quote] Hallmark will only make movies with Steppin' Fetchit gays: the kind who are hyper feminized, trivialized and second bananas to an all-knowing woman, probably a veterinarian or pediatric oncologist. You know ,something where the woman is always the hero.

Which would make them no different than that horrible NBC sitcom soon to die again for good this time.