GENSOCIAL
The Alien Xmas trailer briefly revisits the North Pole characters from Jon Favreau’s Elf. The new Netflix holiday movie comes to us from Killer Klowns from Outer Space creators, the Chiodo Brothers, who also worked with Favreau on Elf. In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment from the Alien Xmas trailer, one can clearly see Baby Walrus and Arctic Puffin hanging out in the North Pole, just like they were doing when they wished Buddy the Elf luck on his journey to New York City.
Jon Favreau famously provided the voices for Baby Walrus and Arctic Puffin in Elf, while the Chiodo Brothers handled the stop-motion animation. It’s not clear how long the North Pole characters will be in Alien Xmas at this time. Last year, Favreau revealed that he was working with the brothers again. “[I’m] working with Netflix on a stop-motion Christmas special. I’ve been trying to work with these guys the Chiodo brothers, who did the stop-motion on Elf, it took over 15 years, only because the business model changed.” Thankfully, the creative teams were able to reunite and pay tribute to their first-ever project together at the same time.
Alien Xmas takes place when a race of kleptomaniac aliens attempt to steal Earth’s gravity in order to more easily take everything on the planet. Only the gift-giving spirit of Christmas and a small alien named X can save the world. X is a little alien who learns that in a world full of stuff, things aren’t meant to be taken, but given. The story is based on the Chiodo Brothers’ 2006 book of the same name. In the trailer, Santa Claus begins telling the story of the first alien Christmas, which quickly goes off the rails into a zany alien holiday tale.
Alien Xmas is executive produced by Jon Favreau and was directed by Stephen Chiodo and produced by Edward Chiodo. Charles Chiodo is also on board as an executive producer. In addition to their work on Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Elf, the brothers have a lot more stop motion animation credits to their names including, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel, along with Vincent, Critters, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Team America: World Police. “We were bitten by the monster bug very early on,” said Charles Chiodo when asked how they got into the entertainment industry. “King Kong, Godzilla, Son of Kong, all those monster movies we grew up with – we were just fascinated with monsters. That was our thing.”
Alien Xmas is all set to premiere November 20th, exclusively on Netflix. The book is currently available to purchase, and one can imagine that the Chiodo Brothers will end up selling quite a bit more once everybody gets a look at their iconic stop motion animation style telling the story on the small screen. You can check out the very first trailer for Alien Xmas above, thanks to the official Netflix YouTube channel.
