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A24’s “The Disaster Artist” and “Lady Bird” led the pack of specialized successes, again landing in the weekend’s Top 10 chart. Both had to hold off the usual pre-holiday dip as well as the massive draw across all audiences for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

A total of eight recent limited releases expanded this weekend –all their theaters combined add up to about the same number of theaters as “The Last Jedi,” but it grossed 22 times as much as the $10-million total of those eight films combined.

To a large extent grosses this week are gravy on top of past totals and more importantly a build-up to the most lucrative time of the year for adult moviegoing. That starts in earnest on Christmas Day. More viable titles are competing than most years, and not all will be optimally available. But distributors hope to regain their momentum with the return...

“All my friends have worked with the Muppets. Everybody I know has done a thing with the Muppets and I always felt a little bit left out,” Michael Caine told Et in 1992 on the set of The Muppet Christmas Carol, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. “But they only did half-hour television shows and I got to do a two-hour movie, so it's great.”

While Caine donned the trademark robes and night cap to portray Ebenezer Scrooge, the reimagining of the Charles Dickens classic also featured Kermit as Bob Cratchit, Fozzie as Mr. Fozziewig (modified from Fezziwig), Miss Piggy as Mrs. Cratchit and Gonzo as Dickens, who hilariously narrates the story with Rizzo the Rat. Despite the recognizable names and faces, some voices of the characters would sound a little different to Muppet fans.

Two years prior, at the happiest place on Earth, no less, there was excitement for a new partnership and the creative...

Besides the Christmas stories that are Biblical in origin, Charles Dickens' 1843 classic telling of A Christmas Carol remains one of the longest-running, most-adapted, and most-relevant holiday tales to date. More than 170 years after the infamous miser-turned-do-gooder Ebenezer Scrooge entered our culture for the first time, there are still quite a few folks out there who could do with taking this timeless lesson to heart. I'd suggest they take the time to do what I did and watch 20 or so adaptations of A Christmas Carol until the moral sinks in, but …...

Bleecker Street is having some fun with critics who disliked their new holiday film “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” starring Dan Stevens and Christopher Plummer. The indie distribution company has been sending coal to the critics who gave the movie a bad review. In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, Bleecker Street has also been making a donation to the Bowery Mission homeless shelter for every piece of coal that gets sent out.

Read More:‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ Review: Charles Dickens Gets a Winsome but Weary ‘Shakespeare in Love’ of His Own

Fortunately, “The Man Who Invented Christmas” doesn’t have too many bad reviews. The film is currently at a healthy 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. IndieWire’s David Ehlrich gave the movie a mixed review, calling it “winsome” and “weary” at the same time. The coal is being sent with a Christmas card that reads:

Humbug to you!

The hits keep on coming. Both “The Disaster Artist” (A24) and “The Shape of Water” (Fox Searchlight) opened strong, despite the usual strong-fall off in post-Thanksgiving audiences. Last year the month of November saw only one specialized release, “Manchester By the Sea,” pull an opening platform per theater average over $60,000. This year has already seen five.

“The Disaster Artist” (in 11 markets) showed the best performance in New York/Los Angeles of any title this year (nearly $120,000 per theater), besting last weekend’s numbers for “Call Me By Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics). They join other Oscar-bound strong openers including “Lady Bird” (A24) and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (Fox Searchlight).

This marks unprecedented strength over such a short period, with “Lady Bird” and “Three Billboards” already performing well in wider release. At some point exhibitors are going to be challenged to handle so many hits (all will not go wide...

Dan Stevens plays Charles Dickens in this tin-eared, saccharine, entirely terrible comic fantasy about the writing of A Christmas Carol

This entirely terrible film feels about as Christmassy as watching England go out of the World Cup at the group stage. Dan Stevens – usually a likable and ingenuous screen presence – is horribly miscast and misdirected in the role of Charles Dickens in a kind of wacky and saccharine muttonchop-whisker-gawd-bless-yer fantasy-comedy of what it was like when he wrote A Christmas Carol and thus supposedly “invented Christmas”.

Dickens keeps bumping into people called “Marley” and “Copperfield” and nodding significantly to himself, occasionally writing in his notebook. The film suggests he wrote this Christmas tale out of the blue (in fact he had already written three other Christmas stories). We see him having lunch with his friend John Forster (Justin Edwards), getting exasperated with his Micawberesque dad John (Jonathan Pryce) and having...

He’s got debts, writer’s block, and a child on the way; a new film tells how Charles Dickens beat the odds to write everyone’s favourite Christmas story. Its star Dan Stevens reveals how he brought the writer to life

In the pecking order of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol is second only to the baby Jesus. Even if you’ve never read it, or had it read to you, you know about that flinty-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemption during one long dark night of the soul.

Bill Murray, Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Alastair Sim have all played Scrooge in one of the endless film remakes and reboots there have been over the years. Now comes the story behind the story, The Man Who Invented Christmas: a heavily fictionalised biopic with Dan Stevens playing Charles Dickens, bashing out A Christmas Carol in six weeks...

It’s nearly Christmastime, so you can expect the dozens, no, it’s got to be hundreds of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol to fill the airwaves once again. The iconic yuletide story never falls out of popularity with television networks and filmmakers and now we’ve learned that a new version is in the works, from a couple of unlikely sources.

The Wrap is reporting that Tom Hardy and legendary director Ridley Scott are teaming up to bring Ebeneezer Scrooge back to curmudgeonly life in a fresh adaptation, due to arrive on the BBC in Christmas 2019. The twist is, though, that the pair haven’t signed on to act in and direct the piece. Instead, Hardy and Scott are on hand to produce the adaptation via their production companies – Hardy Son & Baker and Scott Free, respectively.

Their partnership on this continues from their work together on two other successful series,...

Joseph Baxter Nov 29, 2017

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has been tapped by the BBC to oversee TV adaptations of several classic Charles Dickens novels...

It appears that the BBC has television plans of Dickensian proportions set for the near future. A series of small screen adaptations of the 19th century literary works of Charles Dickens are in the pipeline and the network has tapped Steven Knight, the mastermind behind the hit series Peaky Blinders, to head this ambitious initiative.

See related Gotham season 4 episode 9 review: Let Them Eat Pie Gotham season 4 episode 8 review: Stop Hitting Yourself Gotham season 4 episode 7 review: A Day In The Narrows

BBC controller of drama Piers Wenger has commissioned the series of Dickens TV adaptations, in which Steven Knight will work to create what is being called “a boxset of Dickens’s most iconic novels,” which will roll out in the next few years. Apropos to the holiday season,...

Two year-end Oscar contenders, “Call Me by Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics) and “Darkest Hour” (Focus Features), opened well over the Thanksgiving holiday. “Call Me by Your Name” is now the top initial weekend platform grosser of the year, at a level often seen by films that end up as Oscar leaders. While Wednesday opener “Darkest Hour” didn’t perform at the same level, Focus launched the World War drama at a level consistent with its favorable reviews and strong media positioning.

“Bombshell: The Heddy Lamarr Story” (Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber) enjoyed an excellent initial New York single theater showing, as yet another documentary about creative world figure drew unexpected interest.

Read More:‘Call Me by Your Name’ Screenwriter James Ivory Loves the Story Too Much to Think About Sequels

Two robust recent openers, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (Fox Searchlight) and “Lady Bird” (A24), showed continued strength, pulling crossover interest...

The Man Who Invented Christmas' Dan Stevens and Bharat Nalluri chat about their new holiday movieThe Man Who Invented Christmas' Dan Stevens and Bharat Nalluri chat about their new holiday movieAmanda Wood11/23/2017 11:45:00 Am

The holidays are almost here! As they grow nearer, more and more holiday movies are popping up. This week’s The Man Who Invented Christmas is one of this season's holiday tales, and it’s one the whole family can enjoy.

Dan Stevens stars as author Charles Dickens, the author of "A Christmas Carol" and the man responsible for much of how we celebrate Christmas today. In The Man Who Invented Christmas, we get to learn the story of how Dickens wrote one of his most famed works in a whirlwind holiday season. Christopher Plummer and Jonathan Pryce also star.

We caught up with Dan Stevens and director Bharat Nalluri to discuss bringing...

As Les Standiford’s book would tell it, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) found himself in somewhat of a creative rut after a lengthy and expensive tour of America post-Oliver Twist. He had published three flops since buying a new London home in need of wholesale remodeling and began watching his pocketbook dwindle along with his confidence. It was as though the autumn of 1843 presented him a make or break moment wherein he wasn’t certain he would ever write again. And then inspiration struck with the voice of a new maid (Anna Murphy’s Tara) telling the children Irish ghost stories before bed. This idea of Christmas Eve providing a doorway of sorts to the spiritual world planted itself in Dickens’ mind. Soon after Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) was born.

The last thing anyone needs in 2017 is another adaptation of A Christmas Carol — especially since none have ever come...

Dan Stevens (left) stars as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer (right) stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in director Bharat Nalluri’s The Man Who Invented Christmas, a Bleecker Street release. Photo credit: Kerry Brown / Bleecker Street ©

Dan Stevens gives a frenetic performance as Charles Dickens racing to finish writing “A Christmas Carol” in time to publish before the holiday, in The Man Who Invented Christmas. Directed by Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day), this film has all the Christmas color and Victorian period costumes and sets you could want in a Christmas film. The film is mostly a clever way to retell the famous tale, as characters spring from the author’s imagination while he struggles with his own family issues and races to meet a pre-Christmas release deadline, but it also touches on how his short novel transformed a once-minor holiday into the tradition we know today.

With 2017 nearing an end, the multiplex is ready to get you in the mood for the big holiday season. Those Bad Moms and the Daddy’S Home gang have gathered under the tree, and today we’ll find out how Charles Dickens became known in some circles as The Man That Invented Christmas. Now the talented team at Pixar are here to celebrate…Dia de Muertos. Hey that was almost three weeks ago, so you probably just boxed up all your Day of the Dead decorations. Just what are those jokers in Emeryville up to (well, Mexican movie goers did see it closer to the actual date)? Wasn’t that special day fully explored three years with The Book Of Life? Not hardly, and really if Christmas can be the setting for a myriad of flicks (from Elf to Die Hard), why can’t this day have more than one...

“The Man Who Invented Christmas” needed to accomplish two tasks: Tell the story of how Charles Dickens created the beloved classic “A Christmas Carol,” and in turn illustrate how the story’s popularity helped turn December 25 into a cultural behemoth. Alas, it succeeds at neither, even though its source material (the non-fiction book by Les Standiford) excels at both. As a portrait of an author on the verge of a breakthrough, this is a run-of-the-mill, occasionally clumsy biopic; as for contextualizing Christmas, it never explains how it functioned before Dickens and only briefly mentions how it changed after him. (When one.

Dan Stevens loves Christmas. Not in the way that everybody who Christmases loves Christmas, no, he is a Christmas tree up, hang the lights after Halloween kind of Christmas guy. "We enjoy it very much in our house. I have three kids now, so that's three times the fun," he says of daughters Willow, 7, and Eden, 1, and son Aubrey, 5, with his wife, jazz singer Susie Hariet. "It's a lot of board games, classic movies. We always screen The Muppet Christmas Carol every Christmas Eve. For us, it's a special time of year."

Their Christmas Eve screening may soon become a double feature, as the actor's new movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas, out Nov. 22, makes a fitting follow-up to Kermit the Frog's starring role as Bob Cratchit, with The Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens. In it, Stevens plays Dickens as he sets out to write a Christmas book on a six-week deadline and dreams up his unexpectedly...

Dan Stevens loves Christmas. Not in the way that everybody who Christmases loves Christmas, no, he is a Christmas tree up, hang the lights after Halloween kind of Christmas guy. "We enjoy it very much in our house. I have three kids now, so that's three times the fun," he says of daughters Willow, 7, and Eden, 1, and son Aubrey, 5, with his wife, jazz singer Susie Hariet. "It's a lot of board games, classic movies. We always screen The Muppet Christmas Carol every Christmas Eve. For us, it's a special time of year."

Their Christmas Eve screening may soon become a double feature, as the actor's new movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas, out Nov. 22, makes a fitting follow-up to Kermit the Frog's starring role as Bob Cratchit, with The Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens. In it, Stevens plays Dickens as he sets out to write a Christmas book on a six-week deadline and dreams up his unexpectedly...

MaryAnn’s quick take… There’s charm and wit in its fanciful depiction of the creative process, but the film downplays the social activism that Dickens fully embraced in his work. I’m “biast” (pro): love Dickens and A Christmas Carol

I’m “biast” (con): haven’t been the biggest fan of Dan Stevens

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Did Charles Dickens really invent our modern observance of Christmas? Well… he certainly contributed to it, with his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol bringing to it a spirit of family celebration and togetherness and moving the holiday away from its religious grounding to a more secular one focused on ecumenical kindness and generosity. But we also have Prince Albert to thank, for importing his German Yuletide customs — such as evergreens and Christmas trees — to England when he married...

The Man Who Invented Christmas tells the magical journey that led to the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), Tiny Tim and other classic characters from A Christmas Carol. Directed by Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), the film shows how Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) mixed real life inspirations with his vivid imagination to conjure up unforgettable characters and a timeless tale, forever changing the holiday season into the celebration we know today.

The Man Who Invented Christmas opens everywhere November 22nd, but We Are Movie Geeks would like to give St. Louis-area a chance to see it early! There’s a screening Wednesday, November 15th at The Plaza Frontenac Theater at 7pm. Just leave your name in the comments section below, and we’ll contact you how to redeem your free passes (each good for two people). Merry Christmas!

The post Win Free Passes to See The Man Who Invented Christmas...

"Why Christmas? Does anybody really celebrate it anymore, apart from our clerk who never misses an opportunity to take a day off -- with pay. More or less an opportunity for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December."

This exclusive clip from The Man Who Invented Christmas makes it clear where author Charles Dickens got his inspiration for the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In the upcoming holiday film, Beauty and the Beast star Dan Stevens plays the author and, when his penny-pinching publishers claim there isn't a market for Christmas books, Dickens accepts their challenge -- we all know how that story ends.

Photo: Bleecker Street

A Christmas Carol is perhaps one of the most famous books ever, but not many know the tale of exactly how Dickens dreamt up his ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come -- not to mention, how he finished the book in a mere six weeks...

Bleecker Street has released a featurette for The Man Who Invented Christmas. The upcoming film functions as an origin story of sorts for A Christmas Carol, following Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) as he tries to come up with the story and the characters who redefined our understanding of Christmas. Let’s be honest, this is kind of the natural evolution of the A Christmas Carol adaptations. It’s one of the most adapted books of all time, so it was only a matter of time before someone went and made a story behind the story of A Christmas Carol. Although …...

It’s only been a few short weeks since Winnie the Pooh got the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment in “Goodbye Christopher Robin” — a film that inspired this critic to lament that “we used to tell stories; now we just tell stories about how we used to tell stories” — which means that we’re already long overdue for another saccharine period fable about the creation of another literary icon. Enter Ebenezer Scrooge, who came to Charles Dickens at a moment when both men were at a low point in their lives.

The year was 1843, the great author (a manic Dan Stevens) was 31, and his massive fame was ebbing in the wake of three consecutive flops. With the winter settling in and a certain lifestyle to maintain, Dickens was in desperate need of a Christmas miracle. There was only one problem: There hadn’t been a Christmas miracle in almost 1,843 years. You see,...

Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol gets the sort of origin story normally reserved for superheroes in The Man Who Invented Christmas. Bharat Nalluri's whimsical comedy/drama wants to have its Christmas cake and eat it too by attempting to be both a (highly fictionalized) biographical portrait of Dickens and, simultaneously, a creative spin on the oft-dramatized tale. It doesn't fully succeed at either, but it does offer enough enjoyable Masterpiece Theater-style moments to entice Anglophiles and those who can never get enough of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dan Stevens plays Dickens, and if the casting initially seems inappropriate it must be remembered...

Robert Guillaume, who played Benson DuBois on 'Soap' and 'Benson,' has died after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 89. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Robert Guillaume, who played the quick-witted and sarcastic Benson DuBois on Soap and the spinoff Benson, has died. His widow, Donna Brown Guillaume, told The Associated Press that he died at home in Los Angeles where he was battling prostate cancer. He was 89.

In 1977, Guillaume took on the role of DuBois, a butler to the wealthy Tate family, on ABC's soap-opera parody sitcom Soap.

Secret Superstar

Starring Zaira Wasim, Aamir Khan

Directed by Advait Chandan

It is easy and comforting to get swayed by the rags-to-riches fable constructed with such contemporary diligence and zeal by first-time director Advait Chandan. But once you get to penetrate the bubble of bonhomie and get into thick of things, so to speak, you come face-to-face with an unnerving sterility.

Secret Superstar is one of those well-meaning films that keeps reminding you constantly of how well-meaning it is. Many times as I watched Advait Chandan’s panoply of tricks and treats I felt I was being offered a Christmas deal with ‘Santa’ Aamir Khan mentoring the film’s 15-year old wanna-shine Zaira Wasim whose brilliance as an actor is far more dazzling than anything that is written into this film to support her dreams.

Everyone, we are told in many different ways in this stretched-out ode to wish-fulfilment, has the right to dream.

Fall is the season of Real-People movies — the biopics that often fuel Oscar hopes. Recent weeks brought “The Battle of the Sexes,” “Stronger,” and “Victoria & Abdul” and there’s more than a dozen to come, including “Marshall,” “The Post,” “Darkest Hour,” and “The Current War.” There’s good reason to believe that a biopic might produce awards. In the last five years, 28 of the 100 Oscar acting nominees played real-life characters, as did four of the 20 winners. But when it comes to the box office, the odds aren’t as kind.

Read More:With ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Darkest Hour’ Showing Strong, Will Churchill-Heavy Britpics Storm the Oscars?

Since 2012, there have been about 100 biopics including hits like “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network,” and “Julie and Julia.” But while recent years featured real-life characters and stories in some of the biggest non-franchise hits, the format may have reached a saturation point.

Last year,...

We are now getting our first look at the official trailer and poster for a holiday drama about Charles Dickens titled The Man Who Invented Christmas. The movie follows Dickens and the creation of his iconic character Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. Dan Stevens stars as Dickens, and Christopher Plummer plays Scrooge. As you know, The Christmas Carol has become a major part of Christmas culture.

The film is directed by Bharat Nalluri (The 100) and is written by Susan Coyne. The cast includes Jonathan Pryce, Simon Callow, Donald Sumpter, Miriam Margolyes, Ian McNeice, Bill Paterson, and Justin Edwards. 

Here's the first trailer (+ poster) for The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is set to be released on November 22nd.

Christmas has come early, at least for some folks who like what they see in the first trailer for The Man Who Invented Christmas. However, despite the fact that Bleecker Street rolled out Christopher Plummer (who plays Scrooge in this film and turns 88 this December) to smooth over any resistance to this trailer, there will be those who say "Humbug" to this take on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." I'm ... weirdly in the middle of this divide. On the coal side of things, this movie has a terrible title that's likely to both piss people off and …...

Dan Stevens has been everywhere this year, from Hollywood blockbusters like “Beauty and the Beast” to indies such as “The Ticket” and acclaimed television dramas like FX’s “Legion.” The English actor’s banner year wouldn’t be complete with at least one fall project, and so we have “The Man Who Invented Christmas” set for release this November.

Stevens stars as famed author Charles Dickens in the story of the six weeks in which he brought “A Christmas Carol” to life. Dickens was coming off of three poorly received novels at the time, and every major publisher rejected his pitch for a Christmas-themed tale. The author needed a hit to make ends meat for his family and revive his career, and little did he know a miracle was in store.

Read More:‘Apostle’: Dan Stevens to Star in ‘The Raid’ Director Gareth Evans’ Cult Thriller

“The Man Who Invented Christmas...

“My spirit never walked beyond the limits of our moneychanging hole. so I cannot rest; I cannot stay; I cannot linger – anywhere.”

The 1935 version of Scrooge screens this Thursday and Friday (December 22nd and 23rd) evenings at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The feature will be preceded by two animated shorts: Somewhere in Dreamland (1936 – 9 min.) and Christmas Comes But once a Year (1936 – 9 min.). The program starts at 7:30 both evenings. This is a Free event.

In this straightforward adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella “A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas,” Ebenezer Scrooge (Sir Seymour Hicks) is the ultimate miser and cannot stomach Christmas or holiday cheer. His impoverished clerk Bob Cratchit (Donald Calthrop) and nephew Fred (Robert Cochran) are full of holiday spirit. But in the night, visits by three spirits leave a lasting impression on Scrooge.

While not as well-known as other versions of the Dickens classic (Owen,...

Team Experience has been sharing their favorite Christmas flicks. Here's new contributor Jorge on a Burton special...

Edward Scissorhands, at first sight, not the most Christmassy movie. It is not an iteration of a Charles Dickens’ novella, there are no Santa Clauses, and no one is chasing anyone through a snowed-in airport. Falling snow is a big motif throughout, but only the last third takes places during that time of year.

But it beautifully captures the sentiment of Christmas in the most important sense...

In the original version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a bitter miser who hates Christmas. Let’s be real, though: Cranky old men are sooooo 1843. If one were to remake A Christmas Carol, it would make more sense for the protagonist to be an Internet commenter with a hateful streak. That’s exactly the idea behind “A Troll Carol”, a new holiday special produced by Maker Studios as part of the web series Casual Sketch.

A Troll Carol’s take on Scrooge is a lonely, goateed hater portrayed Mike McNeal. As he settles down for another night of flaming people in comment sections, he is haunted by an infamous troll named Jake Marley (Peter Gilroy). Marley presents Scrooge with the Internet trolls of past, present, and future, inviting him to see the errors of his ways.

Casual Sketch, which consists of several humorous vignettes such as this one,...

Gem Wheeler Dec 21, 2016

We celebrate the work of M.R. James, whose eerie ghost stories were made into a festive tradition by the BBC...

A shadow lurking just beyond the edge of the vision. Dusty manuscripts bearing fragments of ancient testimony, conflicting and confounding. The sickening touch of a decayed hand, grasping at us from the darkness. The imagery of the ghost story may differ between cultures, but the sense of creeping dread left by the most effective tales remains universal.

See related Jonathan Creek review: The Clue Of The Savant's Thumb Alan Davies interview: Jonathan Creek, Qi, "Creek Geeks" & more... Rik Mayall interview: Jonathan Creek, Bottom, Hooligan's Island, & more... Sheridan Smith interview: Jonathan Creek & more... David Renwick interview: Jonathan Creek, One Foot In The Grave, & more...

One name stands out in the grim roster of English purveyors of the form: Montague Rhodes James, an eminent medievalist with a sideline in...

Wesley Mead Dec 19, 2016

Think Christmas TV has always been warm and fluffy? Think again, as we revisit some disturbing vintage festive specials...

The festive season holds long-held ties to the macabre. From the classic novels of Charles Dickens to the melancholy of the Christmas carol canon, Christmas has always harboured a darker side, lurking beyond the tinsel and mince pies. That role has extended to festive television: for every smiles-and-silliness sitcom special, there’s a programme with an altogether more disturbing spin on the season – be that a dramatic Christmas episode imbued with fear and bloodshed, or a family classic whose ostensibly wholesome charms look questionable in retrospect.

See related Star Wars: Rogue One enjoys huge opening weekend

An early mainstay of the medium in its infancy, morality play anthology series were our first taste of a darker Christmastime being translated to television. Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ Back From Christmas...

A Christmas Carol is a weird fucking story. It’s about ghosts, death, rich assholes, sad poor people, and, eventually, the spirit of Christmas. It has been told an almost uncountable number of times, one of the easiest ways to make a special Christmas episode of anything. But somehow, it all clicks into place every time: Ebenezer Scrooge gets through the gauntlet of darkness and buys hams for the whole city, and you walk away full of Christmas cheer.

YouTuber Heath Waterman has celebrated those many, many iterations of Charles Dickens’ classic by editing 400 of them together into a single, coherent narrative. Questions asked in one rendition are answered by characters in another; one actor’s portrayal of Scrooge might fall from the sky, but a different one will land. Since the beats of the story are so consistent, everything unfolds cleanly.

There’s an unending parade of pop ...

We can’t blame you for thinking you know all there is to know about your favorite beloved holiday flicks. After all, annual 24-hour marathons and Netflix access make it almost too easy to unintentionally learn every heartwarming and hilarious line.

But even the most diehard Christmas movie fanatics still have secrets to discover, from just how much actors went it took to bring storybook characters to life, to the cameos you might have missed even on your 10th viewing.

1. Now a beloved classic, It’s a Wonderful Life was a total box office flop when it was released in...

Welcome back to a special ongoing look at Warner Bros. and how it's handled its DC Comics properties. It's going to be a weekly, ongoing miniseries here at Lrm.

It's suggested that you read the previous entries in the series, as they all build upon one another:

Column #1

Column #2

Column #3

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

- Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"

In 2012, Warner Bros. found itself in a uniquely Dickensian situation. On the one hand, The Dark Knight Rises had just concluded the finest series of films based on their DC property since in 1989’s Batman. They were riding high, enjoying the glow of Christopher Nolan’s work in making high-minded, mature, and often fascinating movies out of comic book characters, while also enjoying the love of fans, critics, and paying customers alike. Yet on the other hand, there’s the...

The Man Who Invented Christmas is a film that revolves around the story of how Charles Dickens created his iconic classic A Christmas Carol. The movie is based on a book of the same name written by Les Standiford.

Dan Stevens (The Guest, Downton Abby, Beauty and the Beast) has been cast in the role of the young Dickens, Christopher Plummer (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Insider) is playing Scrooge, and Jonathan Pryce will play Dickens’ father.

The story is set in October 1843, "when Dickens was broke and distressed with his previous three books having failed. Rejected by his publishers, he set out to write and self-publish a book he hoped would keep his family afloat, and after six fever-pitched weeks, he created A Christmas Carol."

A Christmas Carol is my favorite Christmas story of all time and I think it's great they are making a film about...

After Sacha Baron Cohen attempted to get it made for many years, it looks like a Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody is finally moving forward with a different star. While Ben Whishaw also circled it briefly, the role of the late Queen frontman is now attached to the Emmy-winning Mr. Robot star Rami Malek. According to Deadline, Bryan Singer is attached to direct the film, which is now being scripted by The Theory of Everything writer Anthony McCarten. With a shoot eyed to begin early next year, as much we’d like to see the director step away from X-Men territory, hopefully this one doesn’t turn out to be as by-the-numbers as McCarten’s previous work.

While Dan Stevens recently got set to lead the latest thriller from The Raid director Gareth Evans, he also has found time to lead a period drama. He’s set to star in The Man Who Invented Christmas,...

At the end of each year, audiences are introduced to films that studios believe will be their big awards season favorites. This is also the time of year when studios buy up the rights and begin producing their films for next year’s awards. And thus, Deadline reports that Bleecker Street has acquired the rights to the film “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” and the studio is hoping that this film will be awards bait in 2017.

Continue reading Dan Stevens Is Young Charles Dickens In ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ at The Playlist.

A Christmas Carol, the time-honoured story from Charles Dickens, needs no introduction. First published in the mid 1800s, the supernatural Dickens parable is still very much a cornerstone of the festive season, and many can recite Ebenezer Scrooge’s encounters with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come from memory. But what of the story behind the classic?

Coming off a string of literary duds, Charles Dickens was struggling to make ends meet before fleshing out A Christmas Carol in the space of six weeks, a comeback story that serves as the spine for Les Stanford’s 2008 non-fiction novel, The Man Who Invented Christmas.

It’s now being packaged for the silver screen, according to Deadline, who reveal that Dan Stevens has landed the star role of the young Charles Dickens, headlining a cast comprised of Christopher Plummer and Game of Thrones star Jonathan Pryce. They’ll play Scrooge and Dickens Sr.

Joseph Baxter Nov 8, 2016

The Man Who Invented Christmas will star Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens, depicting the birth of A Christmas Carol.

The to-do list of Dan Stevens continues to grow. The actor, who will notably become the CGI/live-action realisation of a certain hairy hunk to Emma Watson’s Belle in 2017’s Beauty And The Beast, has just nabbed a movie in which he will play one of the 19th century’s most consequential authors.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dan Stevens has landed the lead role in a project called The Man Who Invented Christmas. In the film, Stevens will be playing Charles Dickens. The film will based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Les Standiford, which depicts a broke and dispirited Dickens in the Christmas of 1843 and his efforts to get A Christmas Carol published. The legendary Christopher Plummer will also appear in the film...

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to The Man Who Invented Christmas, a new movie to be directed by Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) based on Les Standiford’s book that recounts how Charles Dickens created his iconic A Christmas Carol. Susan Coyne (Mozart in the Jungle) penned the adaptation. The pic is set to begin production in December ahead of a planned 2017 release. Dan Stevens is aboard play the young Dickens, Christopher Plummer is Scrooge, and…...

A Man Called Ove (En man som heter Ove) Music Box Films Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: B+ Director: Hannes Holm Written by: Hannes Holm based on Fredrik Backman’s novel Cast: Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Filip Berg, Ida Engvoll, Tobias Almborg, Klas Wiljergard Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 9/15/16 Opens: September 30, 2016 In Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge changes from one of the world’s most famous curmudgeons (“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart”) to a regular human [ Read More ]

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A Christmas Carol is the definition of the sort of timeless Christmas classic that folks love to enjoy during the holiday season. So naturally, this means that the Charles Dickens source material is ripe for reinterpretation over the almost two centuries that the story has existed. The latest version to take a swing will be a new Bennett Miller directed / Tom Stoppard written interpretation. The film was recently announced by The Hollywood Reporter, as Annapurna Pictures is developing A Christmas Carol as a sort of reunion with Bennett Miller, who previously directed Foxcatcher for the production shingle. As if that wasn't prestigious enough, bringing Oscar-winning writer Tom Stoppard into the mix lends an air of authenticity, as the award-winning playwright won his moment of golden glory for his screenplay to Shakespeare In Love. So what's supposed to make this version of A Christmas Carol any better or different from the...

"Capote" helmer Bennett Miller and "Shakespeare in Love" screenwriter Tom Stoppard are teaming for a new film adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic fable "A Christmas Carol" for Annapurna Pictures.

Set in the 19th century like Dickens' 1843 novella, the story follows Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemptive Christmas Eve tour of the holiday past, present and future.

The story has been famously adapted for the screen countless times from the Bill Murray-led "Scrooged" to a Robert Zemeckis mo-cap adaptation to even an "Uncle Scrooge"-themed version.

Megan Ellison, Scott Rudin, Jennifer Fox and Miller will produce.

Source: THR...

Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Tom Stoppard are joining forces to bring a new version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the big screen. The project, which will be a period piece set in the 19th century like Dickens’ original, is being developed for Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures. Ellison, Miller, Scott Rudin and Jennifer Fox will serve as producers. Dickens’ classic 1843 novella about Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemptive Christmas Eve tour of the holiday past, present and future has already been adapted for numerous film and TV shows — among them, Brian Desmond Hurt’s famous 1951 version starring

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With Downton Abbey in its sixth and final season, the series' creator Julian Fellowes has embarked on a new venture that merges the episodic nature of the PBS Masterpiece show with the written word. Belgravia, Fellows' next project, will be a serialized novel in the tradition of authors like Charles Dickens, with each chapter delivered on a weekly basis to readers via tablet app.

"To marry the traditions of the Victorian novel to modern technology, allowing the reader, or listener, an involvement with the characters and the background of the...

Even Christmas carolers can't get Richard Simmons to come out of hiding. It's like a page was ripped out of a Charles Dickens novel ... carolers serenaded Simmons at his Hollywood Hills home  ... to no avail. Simmons hasn't been seen in almost 2 years, even cutting ties with some of his closest friends. His rep told us he's just enjoying life out of the public eye. Read more...

WWE.com

Professional wrestling hasn’t always been kind to Christmas. In fact, that sacred day has become something of a punching bag for our favorite pseudosport. Perhaps it’s because promoters know that viewers at home are watching Christmas specials and fans at live events are sluggish with eggnog, but wrestling shows have a tendency to sail off into very strange territory in late December.

This list chronicles 25 of the strangest indignities suffered by Christmas at the hands of professional wrestling, including terrible gimmick matches, innumerable Charles Dickens references, and a truly unsettling amount of physical violence suffered by Santa Claus. Saint Nick has beaten, bruised, Stunned, and struck by moving vehicles. WWE is a weird place.

So, don we now our gay apparel — available at WWEShop.com, probably — and join me as I explore pro wrestling’s bizarre relationship with the Yuletide season.

25. Jingle Belles Match WWE.com

Once upon a time,...