David Harbour of Stranger Things and Black Widow plays Santa Claus in Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola’s R-rated holiday thriller Violent Night, which has been described as a perfect combination of gore and Christmas spirit. Universal will be giving the film a theatrical release on December 2nd, and with that date just a couple weeks away a featurette has arrived online to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the brutal action comedy. The featurette can be viewed at the bottom of this article.
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.
Coming to us from 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, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and Bullet Train. 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.
A JoBlo representative had the chance to watch Violent Night at New York Comic Con last month and said, “It was full of brutal gory acting, corny jokes, over the top performances… AND I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!”
Are you interested in Violent Night? Let us know your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below. Here’s the featurette: