The upcoming A Christmas Story sequel has been set for an HBO Max release this Fall. A Christmas Story is a holiday classic that was released in 1983 and helmed by director Bob Clark, who had ironically previously used the holiday as the backdrop for a harrowing horror story in the 1974 proto-slasher Black Christmas. The 1983 film is a much more family-friendly affair, following the exploits of Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) and his family and friends during the Christmas season when he was 9 years old. The film has received two quasi-sequels in the intervening years, with 1994's My Summer Story bringing back two minor cast members and 2012's direct-to-video A Christmas Story 2 set six years later and featuring an entirely different cast that included Home Alone star Daniel Stern.
This new follow-up, which is titled A Christmas Story Christmas, will be the first proper sequel in the unconventional franchise. Featuring the return of Billingsley, who hasn't acted regularly since the late 1990s (despite being featured in a cameo in both Iron Man and Spider-Man: Far from Home), the film will follow an adult Ralphie in the 1970s as he deals with his own family's Christmas mishaps. The sequel, which was directed by Clay Kaytis (The Christmas Chronicles) from a screenplay by Nick Schenk (Gran Torino), will also feature the return of Ian Petrella as Ralphie's younger brother Randy, Scott Schwartz as Flick (the kid who got his tongue stuck to a frozen pole), R.D. Robb as Schwartz (the kid who dared Flick to lick the pole), and Zack Ward as the bully Scut Farkus.
Warner Bros. just announced that A Christmas Story Christmas will be debuting on HBO Max. The project will be available to stream starting one week before this year's American Thanksgiving, on November 17. This news marks one of the first confirmations of new material after the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery put many HBO Max titles on the chopping block, including Batgirl being shelved during post-production and dozens of titles - including HBO Max exclusives - being removed from the service.
In recent years, the streaming landscape has become riddled with Christmas projects, likely spurred on by the success of Hallmark and Lifetime's original Christmas romance TV movies. While services like Disney+ and Hulu have also thrown in their chips, Netflix has largely dominated the season in recent years with Christmas-themed franchises like A Christmas Prince and The Princess Switch, as well as one-off titles like A Castle for Christmas and 2021's Love Hard. This HBO Max date for A Christmas Story Christmas might seem early for a Christmas film, but it will certainly get it in ahead of this year's crop of holiday streaming projects, and land on a weekend where theatrical releases are sparse, only competing with the upcoming #MeToo drama She Said.
One surprising fact about this release date is that it comes 39 years after the original film, almost to the day, as it was released on November 18, 1983. Considering how successful the original was in this same time frame, this legacy sequel can hopefully recapture the reason people loved A Christmas Story in the first place. So far, no follow-up to the original project has been able to draw major attention, but the cast here is at least setting up the film for success.
Source: Warner Bros