Violent Night: David Harbour is Santa in thriller, trailer shown at CinemaCon was action packed & demented

JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray got to watch a lot of cool trailers at CinemaCon in Las Vegas tonight. He saw previews for Halloween Ends, Jordan Peele’s Nope, the James Wan / Blumhouse production M3GAN, the Idris Elba vs. a man-eating lion movie Beast, and the Dracula movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. But his favorite trailer of the night was the one for Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola’s holiday thriller Violent Night, which stars David Harbour of Stranger Things and Black Widow… as Santa Claus!

Scripted by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller (Sonic the Hedgehog), Violent Night will show us what happens when

a team of elite mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage. But the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus (Harbour) is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.

Set up at Universal, Violent Night was produced by David Leitch and Kelly McCormick of 87North Productions. Leitch is best known for co-directing the first John Wick movie (although he wasn’t credited as co-director), and has since followed that up by directing Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Universal Pictures’ Executive Vice President of Production Development Matt Reilly and Director of Production Development Tony Ducret are overseeing the project for the studio.

Harbour, who describes Violent Night as “a hardcore Christmas action movie”, is joined in the cast by John Leguizamo (Land of the Dead), Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon’s Vacation), Alexis Louder (Copshop), Cam Gigandet (Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse), André Eriksen (Norsemen), Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones), and newcomer Alex Haskell.

Here’s how Bumbray described the trailer that was shown at CinemaCon:

David Harbour is Santa, and he’s pissed off. A family suffers a home invasion, with John Leguizamo the head of a terrorist crew. The family’s child begs Santa for help and he shows up with his Elves to kill all of the terrorists. Nonstop action. Looks demented. Very much in the vein of Nobody. Should make David Harbour (and Santa Claus!) an action icon.

Sounds awesome to me, but I was sold on this as soon as I heard we were getting a movie, directed by Tommy Wirkola and produced by David Leitch, about David Harbour fighting terrorists as Santa Claus.

Does Violent Night sound like a movie you would like to watch? Let us know by leaving a comment below.