THAT CHRISTMAS

FROM WED 4 DECEMBER, NETFLIX ANIMATION

If anyone knows a thing or two about making a festive movie, it’s Richard Curtis. Now, 21 years on from his popular romcom Love Actually, which starred the likes of Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Dame Emma Thompson, the acclaimed screenwriter is embracing the seasonal spirit again with his first animated film, That Christmas.

Landing on Netflix this week, the fantasy-comedy adventure is based on Richard’s trilogy of children’s books and follows the entwined tales of residents in the fictional Suffolk seaside town of Wellington-on-Sea as they must pull together when the worst snowstorm in history threatens to ruin everyone’s holiday plans – even Santa’s!

Here, in an exclusive interview, Richard, 68, who also penned box-office hits Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Notting Hill (1999), tells TV Times what to expect…

What do you enjoy most about making films set around this special time of year, Richard?

For me, Christmas is the definitive annual ‘plot’ deadline. In Love Actually, Christmas is the moment by which everybody must have a boyfriend or girlfriend. In this story, there are twin sisters – one naughty and one nice – whose deadline is, ‘Is Santa gonna deliver?’ Then there’s a teen who must follow her parents’ rules for 24 hours, and a boy whose single mum works all hours and he misses his dad – that deadline is, ‘Does Dad turn up for Christmas?’

How did you find the process of turning your book trilogy into an animated movie?

I was intrigued by, ‘What can we do that’s different from what I’ve done before?’ So while our director, Simon Otto [who also worked on the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy], was trying to make That Christmas a ‘Richard Curtis film’, I was trying to make it less like one!