With only about a month to go before The Big Day, this year’s Christmas movies are already lining up to get us in the mood – and the adaptation of Matt Haig’s bestseller, A Boy Called Christmas, shows some of our favourite seasonal traditions in a new light.
Telling the “origins story” of the most generous of superheroes, Father Christmas, it stars newcomer Henry Lawfull as Nikolas, who sets out on a journey into the snowy north in search of his father, who’s on a quest to discover the legendary Elfhlem, the village of the elves. With a cheeky pet mouse and determined reindeer, Blitzen, for company, the boy soon finds his destiny and starts off some of the traditions we still love today.
The film’s cast includes a host of familiar faces including Oscar winners Dame Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent, as well as Toby Jones and Sally Hawkins. In the interviews below, Lawfull talked to us about working in such illustrious company, as well as his love for snow, which helped when filming on location. Director/writer Gil Kenan (who also co-wrote the screenplay for ‘Ghostbusters:Afterlife’) described the pressures that went with taking a new approach to two much-loved legends, as well as his reasons for choosing the tallest of actors to play the smallest character in the film.
