Tippi and Neal Dobrofsky met 30 years ago standing in line for frozen yogurt and fell instantly in love. They've been writing Christmas movies together ever since — more than 30 of them. Here's how the two became Christmas movie specialists:
For a growing group of writers, producers and stars, the escalating war among Hallmark, Lifetime and now Netflix means plenty of good tidings — if you can master the formula and stomach all the yuletide cheer:"There’s a whole list of boxes you have to check off."
"We're liberal Jews writing Christmas movies," says Tippi, acknowledging the irony that their bread and butter is calibrated to appeal to decidedlyred-state values. "They probably think we burn pictures of Donald Trump in our backyard. But it's a lot of Jews writing this stuff." The seemingly insatiable appetite for feel-good Christmas fare has become a year-round bonanza for people like the Dobrofskys whose job it is to make the movies. But keeping up with demand is becoming overwhelming. "We're kind of farmers. They tell us which crop to grow and we do it," says Tim Johnson, a Vancouver-based producer of nearly 40 Christmas features for Hallmark and Lifetime.
The two biggest players have distinct takes on the genre. "Hallmark has done an amazing job of nailing down their brand — the idyllic small-town life," Johnson says. "Lifetime goes a little more urban." By that he means geographically — Lifetime stars don't flee the big city quite as often as Hallmark stars do — and demographically, as Lifetime openly courts African American viewers, who make up a sizable slice of its audience.
There are no million-dollar windfalls to be had, but screenwriters can make a decent living churning out Christmas flicks. Hallmark pays around $50,000 to $60,000 per script on movies generally budgeted around $2 million to $2.5 million. In-demand writers like the Dobrofskys can earn a little more. "They pay on time," says Neal. "And because the audience is so loyal, we get steady residuals.
As for Lifetime, which trended away from holiday movies several decades ago in favor of true crime and thrillers, it has been playing Christmas catch-up and is doing an impressive job of it, greenlighting a full month of originals from a stack of more than 600 submissions — everything from spec scripts to outlines to book adaptations.
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