How a local TV sketch became the David Harbour action movie Violent Night

After more than a decade of toiling on low-budget projects, screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller finally hit the big time when they scored the gig to write the script for Sonic the Hedgehog. And, on the eve of the film's successful release in February 2020, the pair met with their representatives to discuss their next project.

"It occurred to us, oh, we've got Sonic coming out, which was by far the biggest thing we'd ever worked on, so we were like, this seems like a good time to pitch something," says Miller. "We wrangled up what we thought were our best ideas, and presented them to our agents and managers, and each of them kind of had their favorites."

At the end of the meeting, almost as an afterthought, the pair mentioned an idea for a movie they had been kicking around for years but believed was too crazy ever to get made. The film followed many of the same plot beats as 1988's Christmas-set action classic Die Hard but with Santa Claus replacing John McClane.

"We'd recently been talking about what we were calling at that time Die Hard Santa; we'd not even fleshed it out fully enough to have a title," continues Miller. "We just off-handedly mentioned it, and all of them unanimously were like, 'That's the one!'"

Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures David Harbour in 'Violent Night'

Less than three years on, the pair's half-baked pitch has become an actual movie, titled Violent Night, which Universal will release on Dec. 2. The film stars David Harbour as a boozy, disgruntled Father Christmas who must save the life of a young girl named Trudy (Leah Brady) after her wealthy family's remote mansion is attacked by burglars, led by John Leguizamo's Christmas-hating villain.

"It's kind of a Knives Out house, where there's a matriarch (Beverly D'Angelo), and there's all these people vying for position," says Harbour. "This team of mercenaries comes in, they're going to rob the place, and they have everybody trapped. Santa first doesn't want anything to do with it, but there's a little girl who has a radio to him, and he wants to save her. As he begins fighting the bad guys on his naughty list, we start to realize that Santa has a past that was a little less than nice. It's John Wick meets Miracle on 34th Street." The R-rated movie is also, per the film's name, insanely violent. As Harbour explains, "You will believe in Santa Claus again, and you will believe that he's a violent mother---er."

The film is produced by 87North, the company founded by Bullet Train director David Leitch and his business partner Kelly McCormick, and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola, whose credits include the Nazi-zombie Dead Snow franchise and 2013's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. "When I got the script, the first thing I said to the producers at 87North was that it felt like I was born to make this film," says Wirkola. "I didn't mean to sound cocky or anything. Humor mixed with action and gore and heart is just really something that I love."

Casey and Miller's idea took a long and circuitous route getting to the big screen. In fact, the pair first came up with the film's basic premise back in the '90s while attending high school together in Bloomington, MN., where they became friends in the eighth grade. "We always say we met in detention, which makes people think Breakfast Club," says Miller. "But our detention was serious; we weren't allowed to talk to each other."

"We did anyway, but we got yelled at," says Casey. "When we first met, Josh told me about all his plans for movies and the novels he was working on. Right from the get-go, he was like, 'I'm going to move to Hollywood and make giant movies.' That had never even occurred to me as a thing you could do. His ambition was ridiculous. That kind of made me think, well, if this idiot can do it, then I can do it too."

Eric Charbonneau 'Violent Night' writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller

The pair hit on the idea for a mash-up of Father Christmas and Die Hard while writing sketches for a public access TV show. "Like a lot of towns back in the '90s, our town had public access channels, and we got our own show," says Miller. "It was like Saturday Night Live for high school kids. It was like joining a football team or something. It was a bunch of nerds who wanted to put on a TV show. We made several Die Hard parodies." The writer describes their early version of Violent Night as "just the idea of Santa stumbling across some criminals. That version of Santa was way more of a comedic idiot."

After attending different colleges, the pair relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a screenwriting career, their early credits including 2003's college sex-comedy Dorm Daze. "When we first moved out here, we didn't know anyone; we didn't have any connections," says Casey. "I was working at the video store, and Josh was working at the sandwich store in our neighborhood in the Valley. We just ate free sandwiches and watched free videos as we worked on our scripts. I would chat up the customers who came in to rent videos, and we basically sold a script over the counter to these independent producers that became Dorm Daze. We failed to get agents off of that, so we were not in the legitimate film world; we could only sell scripts to people who we met at parties."

"It was like we were getting passed around this community of truly independent filmmakers," says Miller, "the kind of guys who were, you know, raising money from twenty different dentists."

Eventually, Miller created an animated comedy-fantasy show called Golan the Insatiable for Fox, which he co-wrote with Casey. The series ran for just two six-episode seasons but caught the attention of Toby Ascher, an executive at Original Film, the company founded by mega-producer Neal H. Moritz (the Fast and Furious franchise, The Boys), which was developing Sonic the Hedgehog.

"Toby Ascher was a fan of Golan the Insatiable, so he asked us in for a general meeting, not about Sonic, but he has all this Sonic stuff in his office," says Miller. "I remember Pat was like, 'Oh s---, are you guys making a Sonic movie?' And he was like, 'Yeah, yeah, we already have writers, though.' We were like, 'Well, if ever you need more writers, hit us up!' And then, weirdly, that's exactly what happened."

Universal David Harbour in 'Violent Night'

"He called and was like, 'Do you guys really have an idea for a Sonic movie?'" says Casey. "We were like, 'Yeah!' We didn't, but we knew we could come up with one if we thought about it a bit."

The pair's fast thinking also came in handy a few years later after they pitched Die Hard Santa to their reps. "It was the next day, I think, our agent, Mike Goldberg, called us to be like, 'I just talked to Kelly McCormick of 87North, and brought up Die Hard Santa, and she loves just the one sentence description,'" says Casey. "'Can you go pitch it to David Leitch tomorrow?' Of course, we were not ready to pitch it but we said we were. We spent the morning getting ready, and then we met David Leitch for lunch, and David loved it, and then we were out pitching it very shortly to the studios. We never really even had time to write a pitch."

"It was intentionally meant to be a homage to, not even Die Hard, but a homage to Die Hard knock-offs of the '90s, which always follow a very strict formula," says Miller. "That made it easier for us to cobble together a pitch very quickly because we're all so familiar with those movies. Thankfully, Universal went for it."

According to Miller, their point person at Universal had two big notes. "One was, we can't afford to see the North Pole. We were like, 'Okay,'" says the writer. "And the other one was, go crazy. And we were like, that was the exact note we wanted from Universal."

Let off the leash, creatively speaking, the pair set about writing a script that they intended to be packed with comedy and heart but also violence, blood, and mayhem.

"The thing that was always solid in our head was the tone, which I think is part of why we were so hesitant to bring it up," says Miller. 'We were so positive that if we sold it to somebody, someone along the line would be like, 'Why is this Christmas movie rated R?' You could do the whole concept as a PG family movie. Like, it's not hard to imagine like the Kevin James [version]. When talking about it with people, there was always that moment when somebody would be like, 'But it's just a guy dressed as Santa, right?' We're like, 'No, no, no, no, it's literally Santa Claus.' But that made it obvious to us that we might sell it, and at some point, somebody would be like, 'This is too insane if it's about Santa. Can't it be, you know, a retired, out-of-work cop who's playing Santa at like a party or whatever?'"

Having already mixed humor and gory mayhem in his Dead Snow films, Wirkola was an obvious candidate to direct the film. "David Leitch and Kelly McCormick are old friends," says Wirkola. "David did second unit on Hansel & Gretel before he went away and became the world's biggest director. When they sent it to me, they said, 'Yeah, it's basically Die Hard with Santa Claus.' One side of me thought, yeah, that sounds cool, but then my other side was like, uh, okay, that could also be weird and cheesy."

Universal David Harbour and John Leguizamo in 'Violent Night'

The director says that when he read the script, he was "really surprised by the amount of heart that it had, that it felt like a Christmas movie." A very violent Christmas movie. "I love that kind of stuff," says the director. "There's so much fun to be had in mixing tones, and mixing the crazy with heart, and seeing how far you can push these things. Part of my pitch to Universal was, if we can get the heart of the movie right with Santa and Trudy, we can go as crazy as we want, I promise you, for the rest. They never held us back."

Wirkola was happy to work on the script with Miller and Casey. "Sometimes, as writers, you're a genius until the script is done, and then it's like you found it in an alleyway," says Miller. "[Directors] are like, 'Why are you still weighing in on this? You're just the idiots that found this script!' But it was a mutual lovefest. Tommy grew up in northern Norway, but you could just tell from watching Dead Snow and Hansel & Gretel, they had Sam Raimi movies at his video store. Because we were all on the same page, it just made sense to everyone that we keep on it."

Just as Wirkola was the obvious choice to direct the film, so Harbour was an easy pick to play Santa. "Universal was really open when it came to casting," says the director. "It was like, 'Okay, who do you want? Don't think about the 10 normal names that normal studio movies go to, if you could have your pick, who would you go to?' So we started throwing names back and forth. The moment Harbour's name came up it was like, oh, yeah, that just makes so much sense. He was the first guy we sent the script to, and he loved it, and I think I Zoomed with him two days after that, and he was onboard. As soon as he signed on, it was full steam ahead."

Casey reveals that, while the film wasn't written for Harbour, the pair did write it with the actor in mind. "Often when we're writing a movie, we'll kind of discuss, what's this character like, who's playing him?" he says. "Our fantasy casting for Santa, just to get on the same page, was in fact, David Harbour, partially [because of] Stranger Things but especially his SNL Oscar the Grouch sketch. We were like, yeah, that's what Santa's like!"

To prep for the film, Harbour both gained weight and honed his fighting skills. According to Wirkola, "When they asked me at the beginning what kind of [fighting] style should Santa have, I was like, it should be nothing fancy, he should be young Mike Tyson or Foreman, he should just have that power. You feel, when he steps into a room, it's just power. We found a technique which is not about fancy moves or throws or kicks, it's just, how can you, as quickly as possible, just deck another guy. And Harbour really embraced that. Harbour has that feel. He's a big guy and [when] he steps into a room with that big Santa Claus costume on, you really feel that power."

Wirkola shot Violent Night in Canada during the winter, which proved testing even for the Scandinavian. "We shot it in Winnipeg because a lot of those things [in the movie] happen outside, and it was just so cold there," he says. "I'm used to cold, but it was a unique type of cold, which is minus 25, 30 degrees Celsius, and constant wind. It makes you work slower, it makes the actors grumpy, it makes the crew grumpy, and it makes the gear not work properly. But it also looks great. You can see that we've been out there in the snow, that we've been out there in the forest. That's not CGI breath; it's real cold breath."

Universal Director Tommy Wirkola on the set of 'Violent Night'

A quarter of a century after first coming up with the idea, Casey and Miller were on hand to see Violent Night be warmly and raucously received when the movie premiered at this year's New York Comic Con. "It certainly felt great," says Casey who, together with Miller, is currently working on the script for Sonic 3. "This is a movie, right from the get-go, we felt like it would play well to a packed audience. Thank God that Universal is putting it out in the theaters."

"The whole time of us writing it, and then building up to pre-production and stuff, that was during the height of the studios sending all their movies to streaming," says Miller. "We were very worried that would happen. I'm sure tons of people would still have seen it and liked it, but in our mind, it was meant to be [for] almost festival-style crowds, people who applaud when someone's head gets cut off!"

Violent Night is released in cinemas Dec. 2. Watch the film's trailer below.

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