Director Chris Columbus on Santa’s backstory as imagined by Kurt Russell, how this film differs from ‚The Christmas Chronicles‘ and that big musical number.
Chris Columbus has directed some of the most enduring movies of the past few decades, including the Christmas classic Home Alone. So when he signed on to direct Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles 2, after serving as a producer on the first one, he had a clear vision of what he wanted to do. “The first one was primarily a comedy about two kids on an adventure at night,” Columbus says. “For the second, we wanted to open up the mythology. That’s what Kurt was interested in.” “Kurt” is Kurt Russell, who plays Santa Claus. The actor wrote 200 pages of backstory for his character before filming began for the second movie, embracing that mythology by filling in gaps such as how Santa met Mrs. Claus. “That really started the discussion and opened up the world of the North Pole,” Columbus says. “We wanted to bring to it the same integrity and visual scale that we did with Harry Potter.
