How Did You... with Russell Hainline (Hot Frosty)
The Hot Frosty writer gives us the inside scoop on holiday movies and more
Hello Hollyweirdos! I’m pleased to introduced a new long term series of interviews that I’ll be sharing here once a month with other writers! The whole reason I wanted to start this newsletter was to get to share how things work, and what better way to do that than to hear from a bunch of interesting people currently working at all levels of Hollywood? My favorite thing in the world is to hear how other people do things, and so I’ve finally gotten the chance I thought it would be nice to kick things off with my good friend Russell Hainline, writer of the extremely viral new Netflix film Hot Frosty.
I spoke with Mr. Christmas himself to get to the bottom of how HOT FROSTY came to life (sorry) as a project, and how Russell has capitalized on the speed with which Hallmark makes movies to go from working but not yet produced screenwriter to extremely produced screenwriter in the matter of just a couple years.
Ok! Here we go!
How Did You… with Russell Hainline (writer of Hot Frosty)
Russell Hainline writes Christmas movies, loves craft beer, and hosts a mean poker night. HOT FROSTY is out on Netflix now, and he has three more movies coming out in the next 22 days: on Hallmark 11/23, THREE WISER MEN AND A BOY; on Hallmark Mystery 11/27, CHRISTMAS UNDER THE LIGHTS; and on Hallmark 12/14, THE SANTA CLASS.
Can you give us the sort of "origin story" of Hot Frosty as a project? Where and when did it start? Was it an original idea or an assignment?
You know, the beauty of me tweeting the stupidest things imaginable for years occasionally pays off. Such as now, when you asked me, "when did Hot Frosty start?" and I can send you this:
Furthermore, I can also show the world you were on the ground floor of this project, as I texted you this a mere two weeks later. Clearly I'd told you about HOT FROSTY at some point between that tweet and this text:
I don't know whether it started as the logline (which I love) or the title (which I love more), but I started telling people about it, laughing with friends about it, and convincing myself over time, "... no, but I really do need to write this." So sometime in there, I got to work on a spec. My favorite specs are always projects where I think, "This will never get made, but wouldn't it be awesome if it did?" I thought if I pitched this particular idea, it would either get watered down into some pseudo-romance novel version that didn't fully explore the comedy of the premise, or it'd become some smirky, irony-blanketed one-joke comedy where we don't care about the characters and never get emotionally invested in their story. And I had zero interest in either.
By the time March 2022 rolled around, I had a spec I was willing to share with people I trusted to get some feedback. According to my gmail, this is the first time I sent Hot Frosty to anyone.
In August 2022, I met with Michael, a producer at Muse Entertainment, and over beers, I decided, "Why not? I'll tell him about Hot Frosty." Within a month, Hot Frosty was optioned. They loved it for exactly what it was. It took over a year of getting "no"s for Hot Frosty to finally get a "yes" over at Netflix at the beginning of 2024. We were told explicitly that certain people wouldn't read it specifically because they were turned off by the title. Which is insane! If this movie has a boring title, it doesn't tell the audience they're in for laughs. Once you rope them in with the laughs, then you hit them with the heart. I've seen countless reviews on social media along the lines of "so I started watching Hot Frosty because I thought it was going to suck, and ummmmm why is this actually so good and why am I crying?!?!" These are my favorite kinds of responses-- and, needless to say, the sorts of responses that make me feel very vindicated for writing this spec and sticking with this title all the way to the end!
When did you know you had a good idea? How do you know something is a good idea in general?
I couldn't get rid of it. I feel like we all have had this experience: you look back through your notes from the last couple years, and you find an idea in there, and you go "Whoa, this is actually a really good idea! Why didn't I do anything with this?!"... and then you promptly forget about it again. This wasn't one of those. This was one where every day, I woke up and thought, "Forget working on things I'm trying to sell. I want to work on the *fun* project!" Is this a good idea from a business perspective? Probably not! Is this good for the soul? Absolutely!
And ultimately, I'm just a big believer that the audience knows where your heart is. If you really love what you're writing, the reader (and, if you're lucky, the viewer) can tell. Hot Frosty, for whatever anyone thinks of it, is pretty clearly coming from a place of affection. I love big, silly, full-hearted movies like this.
I remember you pitching us the title and concept (and then just sort of constantly texting about it, as evidenced above). Is that something you normally do with ideas to test them out?
If I've written a spec or a goofy idea or something that I'm not sure will ever find a home anywhere, I do find it useful to try them out on a few trusted friends, just to make sure I'm not totally off the rails. And I always have my wife read *everything* I write. I always make sure I'm my target audience first and foremost... but if I'm being honest, she's *really* my target audience. Midwestern women who love romance novels are the backbone of the holiday movie industry. If I hear her laughing or going "awww" in the other room while she's reading, I'm pretty sure I'm onto something.
Talk us through your writing process. Where do you work? When do you work? Why do you work that way?
I do most of my writing when I'm not writing. Walking the dog, lying in bed, taking a shower. I write down a ton of ideas in my Notes app, ideas for lines or character beats or themes or Big Moments. One of the best things to do is go to the movies. It forces me out of my own head for two hours, allows me to watch a story being told that either works or doesn't, and very often makes me think afterward, "How can I accomplish what they did?" or "How do I avoid what they did?"
When I am writing, I'm at my laptop, and I travel. I write on the couch, in the chair, at the kitchen table, at my desk, at a bar, anywhere-- but basically always somewhere quiet. I'm not a coffee shop guy, never have been. I'm too nosy and will absolutely get distracted by interesting conversations around me.
I'm certainly more of a night owl than a morning writer, but the "when" boils down to "whenever I feel like the writing is good." Sometimes I'll do an hour here, two hours there. Sometimes I won't write for a couple days. Sometimes I'll legit write for ten hours only stopping for the occasional bathroom break. I try to use my brain when my brain tells me it's ready to be used. (This sounds very pretentious as I write it down. "Oh, the Hot Frosty Guy shan't write unless a muse smiles upon him!" Maybe I'm just lazy and making excuses so I don't have to write and can go to the movies instead! I'll let someone smarter than me try to analyze my thought processes).
Paint us a picture of your ideal work day:
Wake up whenever I want. Walk the dog. Eat a bowl of Cinnamon Oat Cheerios. Maybe I work out. I probably won't. Actors have abs, writers have beer. (Advantage: writers!) I answer some emails. There's a promising email from a prince who needs me to wire him a few hundred dollars, and in exchange, he'll send me a *million* dollars once he's returned to his home country. Seems like a good return on investment. I put a pin in this for later.
I have some ideas that have been percolating. I start trying to write a scene or chunk of outline or whatever. Whenever I feel myself hitting a road block, I write "***" in my script. That way, I don't lose momentum, and I have something easily searchable in my script/outline/whatever so I can come back and write whatever that thing was when I feel like it (or when I have a deadline and can't stall any longer).
[NOTE FROM COLBY: I do the same thing! Exciting to see it’s a thing!]
I write and I write and I write until I start thinking, "Hey, this isn't very good anymore, I'm forcing it." Then I stop writing. Stretch. Open that beer I've earned with my hard work today. Maybe also some cookies. Cookies are good.
Get ready to go to bed. Have an idea for my script. Think "I should just go to bed, the idea can wait until tomorrow." Get up anyway. Stay up far too late adding it to my script.
ALTERNATE ENDING: I love doing meetings in person instead of Zoom whenever humanly possible. There's nothing I enjoy more than a happy hour meeting with producers, directors, writers, etc. I attribute much of my success to the fact that I'll go out of my way to see people face-to-face when I can. Plus, the beers in this scenario are tax deductible!
Let's get detailed with the timline. When did you first start to write Hot Frosty? How long between that and the first solid draft you could share? And then how long from that to production?
I’m terrible about taking detailed notes on my script progress, and I really should. But I do know that, somewhere between October 2021 and March 2022, I started writing Hot Frosty and got it to the point where it was shareable with you. Once it was optioned around August 2022, it took over a year to get to that magical point in late January/early February 2024 where they said, "Hey, we think Netflix actually wants to make this movie." (Hitting pause during the strike probably didn't help the project, from a timing perspective). I do some rewrites starting in February 2024, and --- brace yourself-- the movie goes into production in April 2024. These movies happen fast!
The main thing that strikes me about working on these holiday movies is how fast they are (relative to the rest of Hollywood). What's the typical life cycle of a Hallmark project like?
I swear to God, I just wrote "These movies happen fast!" without reading what the next question was. Jesus, Russell. The timeline on these Hallmark movies can be absolutely breakneck. For THE SANTA SUMMIT, a movie I started in late fall 2022 that got made in March/April 2023, from turning in an outline to watching a locked cut of the movie... it took five and a half months. You cannot work on these movies unless you enjoy working quickly. (Same goes for the directors-- I've been very grateful that I've worked with incredibly sharp directors my whole career at Hallmark. It makes my job that much easier-- and it makes the timeline of events that much more efficient).
This speed can be absolutely exhausting at times... but it also means I frequently avoid projects getting stuck in development hell and taking years and years to see any progress on. Hallmark works very much like an old Hollywood studio. They're making a lot of crowd-pleasing movies on reasonable budgets. In my experience, they have no interest in getting involved in projects they don't think will go the distance in the next 18-24 months -- and they have no interest in getting stretched overly thin by big expensive debacles. Studios can learn a thing or two from them imo!
I want to go back a bit to Before Hot Frosty (BHF). Run us through how you got into writing for film. What was your first paid writing job? What did you do for money while you were also grinding away at trying to "make it?"
I was a theater kid through college, a public high school teacher right after college. I'd always loved writing, and I thought I could write screenplays over the summers while teaching. I was wrong. (I was too exhausted to write. Teaching is incredibly hard!) So I asked my then-girlfriend, now-wife if she'd like to move with me to LA, as I was going to chase my Hollywood Dream (TM). I had never visited LA. Neither had she. She still said yes for some reason, we threw all our stuff into my Oldsmobile Alero, and we drove across the country.
My first paid writing job for the movies was a Lifetime thriller, eventually titled "Web of Lies." It was for *very* little money, but I knew it'd get made, so I took some incredibly insane notes along the way before eventually getting fired. All that said, it got made, and seeing my name on a TV screen felt very rewarding! (I also subsequently met the director and actors, all of whom were also working for very little money, and they are all lovely, talented people who were trying very hard to make the best movie possible.)
While I was grinding away, I was a private tutor for middle school and high school students. In order to join a tutoring service, I studied the SAT and ACT for a month or so. Good thing, because the entrance exam to become a tutor was composed entirely of the most difficult questions from the SAT and ACT!
This is *exceptionally* good work for aspiring writers, because if you work enough, you can earn full-time type money while working part time.
[Note from Colby: I worked sales. Same idea!]
I tutored for 11 years while I waited to reach the point that I was making enough money to write full-time. Trends come and go, the popularity of certain jobs will rise and fall... but there will always be kids who need help preparing for tests, and there will always be parents willing to pay good money for that help.
When did you transition from sometimes-paid writer to "I'm able to do this and only this for my income?" How did you make that leap?
I was going to make that leap in spring 2023-- but then the strike happened. Whoops! So I tutored a few more months and officially made the leap once the strike ended. Ultimately, my first movie for Hallmark, IN MERRY MEASURE, filmed in summer 2022, was with two executives-- and by the end of 2022, I'd signed on to do another project with each of them. I'd also met a couple producers, one of whom optioned HOT FROSTY, another of whom brought me in to adapt a book into a screenplay-- and while it hasn't been made yet, it paid quite well. After the strike, SANTA SUMMIT aired-- and it was quite well-received. That led to a *lot* of the work I had this year, including working on THREE WISER MEN AND A BOY, the sequel to one of the biggest hit movies they've made in the last few years.
This is such a boring and trite thing to say, but I really do believe if you make your deadlines, do good work, and are easy to get along with, people will want to keep working with you. I try very, very hard to work quickly and efficiently, and I think that reputation has helped keep the offers coming and get me to a point where I can turn down work without jeopardizing my ability to keep the lights on.
We have to talk agents & managers. How did you meet yours?
I met my managers, Evan Corday and Audrey Knox at Cartel, through Jack Grossbart, a long-time producer who got my first Hallmark movie made and really took me under his wing to get me started. I just spoke with him for an hour today, and he told me he takes great pride in bragging to everyone he knows that he discovered me. As is his right!
Evan and Audrey have been a big help. They introduced me to Muse-- I wouldn't be at Netflix without them. I also would be the absolute worst at negotiating my own deals-- I'm a firm believer that, if I ask for a fair price for my labor, you should pay it. Turns out that is *not* how the world works!
What kind of movies excite you?
Anything that leans into earnestness and sincerity. I'm tired of movies that are overly reliant upon this sort of ironic, quippy demeanor designed to protect the audience from having a genuine emotional reaction-- to make them laugh instead of risking the audience starting to wonder whether what they're watching is "corny."
I love action movies. I love Bollywood. I love musicals. I love courtroom dramas. I love detective thrillers. I love silly comedy, the sillier the better. I love weird sci-fi, the weirder the better. I love Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson... all the Andersons, really. I love monster movies. I love sprawling four-part Westerns. I mean... I love just about anything. I just love going to the movies. Every time I go, I'm excited. Maybe that's a corny thing to say. Whatever. I'm leaning into it.
Any advice for writers just starting out?
Make friends. Make as many friends as you can. First of all, writing is lonely and life is hard, and if you have friends, it makes existence far more tolerable. Second of all, you sincerely *never* know who can help your career one day. I got into the Hallmark world because of an intro made by a friend from college-- and I had *no idea* she knew a veteran Hallmark movie producer.
Third of all, I do *not* mean "make industry connections." I mean make friends. An industry connection isn't going to pass along your script to someone. An industry connection isn't going to give you meaningful notes for free and care about your projects. An industry connection isn't going to give a shit when you inevitably cry about something happening in your career or grapple with the crippling sensation of impostor syndrome. But a friend will do all of those things.
So make friends. Best case scenario, maybe they can help you out as you try to navigate this insane industry. Worst case scenario, they can't-- but now you have one more friend to help enrich your life with their presence. And really, that matters a hell of a lot more than whether you '"make it" or not, at the end of the day. (I'm being corny again. So sue me!)
You've sort of become Mr Christmas but I know there's a wide range of stuff you're interested in. What would you love to get to do next that you maybe haven't done before?
I am a *massive* fan of martial arts action movies. Two guys I'd absolutely *love* to write for: Scott Adkins and Iko Uwais. I've got a couple projects, including a spec, that I'm trying to make into reality with my friend Liam, who's a dynamite action director (and who's worked with both Scott and Iko!). Nothing would delight me more than looking at my IMDB and seeing all these feel good Hallmark movies... and then the occasional hard-R hard-hitting martial arts action movie peppered into the mix.
Also, if I was to ever direct-- and I'd love to one of these days-- I'd love to do a true old-school musical, with tap numbers and the like. Fans of my Hallmark movies will know that basically every movie I do has a dance number in it. The ability dance has to both express emotion and entertain simultaneously is unparalleled compared to nearly any other art form. I have a project or two I'm keeping in my back pocket in case I get a chance to direct. If you're a Hollyweird Substack subscriber, and you love musicals, and you have a ton of money burning a hole in your pocket, call me!
Any movies this year you wish you'd written? What have you liked lately?
So many. I thought HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS was absolutely genius. I'm so intensely jealous that I didn't make that. Timo Tjahjanto's THE SHADOW STRAYS is an incredible martial arts action movie-- between this and THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, he's made two of the very best action movies of the last decade plus. THE PEOPLE'S JOKER by Vera Drew, I mean... where to begin with that? It's such a pure expression, so raw, so uncut, so funny, so moving, so absolutely singular.
I loved KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Big epic sci-fi action-adventure, so emotionally engaging, so wonderful. I loved FURIOSA-- George Miller's attention to detail in his world-building is really just second to none. I loved GASOLINE RAINBOW by the Ross Brothers, the guys who did BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS. I loved PERFECT DAYS. I loved HORIZON: CHAPTER ONE and will storm the studio vaults to see CHAPTER TWO if I have to.
Finally, I'm currently a CONCLAVE boy. I'm fully and completely Conclave-pilled. I saw this movie on genuinely *no sleep,* and I was so confident I would pass out in the theaters at this Pope movie.... but every 5-7 minutes, there's a new Big Revelation, and I was so compelled start to finish. There's no reason a movie about electing a Pope should be this goddamn fun.
Anything you want to plug?
HOT FROSTY is currently on Netflix. I have two more holiday romcoms for Hallmark this year that I'd say contain a lot of the sort of big silly ensemble comedy I love: THREE WISER MEN AND A BOY, premiering on Hallmark 11/23, and THE SANTA CLASS, premiering on Hallmark 12/14. Anyone who liked HOT FROSTY should find a lot to enjoy in both of these.
I also, for the first time, have tackled an unabashedly "old school" Hallmark holiday movie-- it was an opportunity that scared me a bit, since it was outside of my goofball comfort zone, but that's ultimately also why I chose to do it. Never back down! It's still got laughs but definitely has more emphasis on drama than anything I've ever tried to do before. It's called CHRISTMAS UNDER THE LIGHTS, and it airs on Hallmark Mystery 11/27.
I'm also all over social media as @russellhfilm. I'll be posting fun pictures on instagram, big write-ups about my experiences on each of my movies on Letterboxd, and probably even live-posting the movies over on Bluesky-- I did that for HOT FROSTY, and it was a jolly good time.
I'd also like to plug SPACEMAN on Netflix and the upcoming Andrew Stanton-directed sci-fi movie IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE.
[I did not force Russell to plug me but I am so glad he did! By the way, while we’re doing plugs…. I have officially left Twitter (RIP) for good. Please come find me on Bluesky.]
Thanks for subscribing y’all! Have a nice weekend and keep Sunday December 1st at 1PM PT marked in your calendars for The first ever Hollyweird Hang on zoom! Details to come next week so keep an eye out!!
We'll be back to our regular format next week!