Writer-director Chris Columbus is well-known for his work on the Home Alone franchise, but there’s a lot of Christmas to be found in his filmography. As both a screenwriter and director, Chris Columbus is known for hilarious and often family-friendly comedies with a touch of drama. Columbus’ films as director include Adventures in Babysitting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Stepmom, and Bicentennial Man, to name a few.
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When it comes to Christmas comedies, the Home Alone franchise is an undisputed Yuletide titan – particularly the first two Home Alone films directed by Chris Columbus that scored box office gold with their tales of a clever kid defeating hapless burglars with comical house traps. However, Christmas is a staple in the filmography of Chris Columbus, with Columbus having no less than nine Christmas-themed movies to his name.
Chris Columbus Wrote Two Christmas Movies
Right from the beginning of his career in the film industry, Chris Columbus dove right into the Christmas sub-genre as screenwriter of the 1984 horror-comedy Gremlins. The movie (only Columbus’ second credit as a screenwriter following the movie Reckless which was released that same year) follows the travails of small-towner Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan), who makes the mistake of not following the rules of keeping his new pet “mogwai”, and ends up unleashing a plague of Gremlins on his town.
Set in the midst of the holiday season, Gremlins became one of the biggest box office hits of 1984 and remains a beloved horror-comedy and Christmas classic. As a bonus, the surprisingly intense level of violence in the PG-rated Gremlins also helped lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating that year, with the PG-rated Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom causing a ratings review for the same reason.
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Additionally, Columbus also wrote and produced the 2004 holiday season comedy Christmas with the Kranks. The film centers on Luther and Nora Krank (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis), who elect to sit out the holidays one year and ruffle the feathers of the Christmas-enthusiast neighbors in the process. It wasn’t one of Columbus’ more well-received Christmas movies, but it nonetheless exemplifies how central the Christmas season is to his filmography.
Chris Columbus Directed Several Christmas Films (Including The First Two Home Alone Movies)
Chris Columbus landed the ultimate holiday season jackpot as the director of 1990’s Home Alone, which earned $467 million worldwide on an $18 million budget and made a child megastar of young leading man Macaulay Culkin. To call Home Alone a Christmas classic would be an understatement. Home Alone is now an annual Christmas tradition around the world, with each new generation following the adventures of the young Kevin McCallister as he is left behind when his family leaves for Paris, with Kevin devising makeshift traps to defend his home from the bumbling burgurlars Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), aka “The Wet Bandits.”
Home Alone‘s holiday box office success made a sequel an inevitability, and in 1992, it came to be with Columbus returning to direct Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which brought Kevin McCallister into a new adventure in the Big Apple along with a new barrage of traps for Harry and Marv. Home Alone 2 was another major hit that’s also become a seasonal classic like its predecessor.
Columbus also helped kickstart a big-screen Christmas franchise of a different sort by directing the first two Harry Potter movies, Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets. While not as Christmas-specific as the Home Alone movies, Columbus’ two Harry Potter films do feature major Christmas-set sequences and situated themselves close to Christmas, with both being released during the holiday season of 2001 and 2002, respectively.
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Chris Columbus Was A Producer On Two Classic Christmas Movies
In addition to his role as writer, director, or both for numerous Christmas-themed movies, Chris Columbus has also been a producer on two other holiday season romps. The first is the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad cult-classic Jingle All The Way, in which Arnie’s Howard Langston tries to get his son a special gift to make up for his frequent fatherly letdowns and absences. The only problem is that Howard waits until Christmas Eve, and the toy in question is a Turbo Man action figure – “the hottest selling Christmas toy ever! Duh!” as Howard learns all too late. Jingle All The Way did end up on the naughty list for many critics and moviegoers upon its 1996 release, though its reputation has gradually grown more positive since.
Chris Columbus’ tenure in Christmas movies also goes even further with his role as screenwriter for 2018’s Netflix Christmas movie The Christmas Chronicles. In the film, a pair of siblings named Teddy (Judah Pierce) and Kate (Darby Camp) must help Kurt Russell’s Jolly Ole’ St. Nick find his missing sleigh and hat in order to complete his annual gift-giving trip on Christmas Eve.
The Christmas Chronicles proved to be a popular holiday hit on Netflix, and its success no doubt played a role in Columbus returning as both co-writer, producer, and director for the The Christmas Chronicles 2 in 2020. The sequel saw Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn reprise their respective roles as Santa and Mrs. Claus from The Christmas Chronicles, and the sequel brought some welcome holiday cheer to the COVID-era Christmas season.
In the end, it is clear that Christmas movies are simply in Chris Columbus’ DNA as a screenwriter and filmmaker – and that his Christmas spirit extends well beyond the Home Alone franchise.
