The Top Movie on Netflix Is About a Hot Snowman — and We’re Fine With That

Once upon a time, an intrepid screenwriter tweeted into the void: “Just had the best idea for a Hallmark Christmas movie holy shit holy shit holy shit.” Little did he know, he would go on to save Christmas in this year of our lord, 2024, when Twitter is now X, and Netflix Christmas movies seem to be our only balm against the encroaching darkness (hyperbole is required when discussing such films).

Don’t pretend like we haven’t all had them — ideas for Christmas movies featuring a go-getter city lady who falls in love with an outdoorsy, ax-wielding man who acts with his teeth. But to follow through on such an endeavor? Well, let’s just say that such a creator has to be made of sterner stuff (I think cookie dough is somehow involved). Russell Hainline has the goods, though, and now, three years after that eureka tweet, he has the number-one Netflix movie in the country: Hot Frosty.

“I think writers all enjoy coming up with ideas that make themselves and their friends laugh, and this was one of those: the title is Hot Frosty, and the logline is ‘what if Frosty the Snowman, when he came to life… was a super hot dude?’” Hainline tells Rolling Stone. “I remember telling a bunch of my friends about this in 2021, and we’d all laugh, and then pause, and say, ‘… No, but really, this should be a movie.’”

So Hainline took quill in hand (let me have this) and penned an epic tale for the ages: a widower named Kathy (Lacey Chabert) comes across a magic scarf that turns a painfully chiseled snowman (think less round balls of snow with a carrot nose and more Statue of David-esque ice-sculpture) into a real boy (Dustin Milligan). And when I say painfully chiseled, I mean it. There are veins. So many veins. Hijinks ensue, which I remember in colorful snippets (much like wrapping paper scraps) since I watched this film as one should: Slightly tipsy on a Sunday evening.

As I recall, Kathy’s heat isn’t working, and she misses her husband, but she owns a “kafe” where everyone in town eats, including a couple who own a second-hand store and gift her with a magic scarf. Not that she’s aware at the time it’s magic — that doesn’t come until later, after she wraps it around the neck of a Fabio-esque snowman who subsequently comes to life. After streaking through town and stealing a jumpsuit from that same second-hand store, the snowman then becomes public enemy number one to a pair of local cops, who are hot on the now-human snowman’s impressively tight tail. (ACAB seems to be an ongoing concern even in Christmasland.)

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The name on the purloined jumpsuit is Jack, so that becomes the snowman’s name, despite “Jack Frost” being the name of another mythical ice beast already. Since Kathy was responsible for Jack’s transformation, she is also responsible for him, which is fun since he’s basically a beautiful idiot who doesn’t know how to use a TV and will melt if he’s exposed to normal body heat. But as we stated, Kathy’s heat isn’t working (foreshadowing!), which makes her house the perfect haven, and once he figures out the TV, he uses YouTube videos and the like to figure out how to become a solid maintenance guy. I won’t spoil the ending for you — mostly because I’m pretty sure I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep on the couch ala “Silent Night” — but suffice it to say, everyone lives happily ever after. Somehow.

If Hot Frosty sounds absolutely deranged — well, that’s because it is. But it also was forged from a particular kind of alchemy that separates a sinful holiday confection from a sugar-sodden mess. “If you think you’re writing something to be ‘so bad it’s good,’ it won’t be anything other than bad,” Hainline says. “You have to set out to write a good movie, a movie in which you care what happens. If you don’t care, there’s no chance your audience will ever care.”

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And this strange yet addicting ridiculousness of the plot is not lost on Hainline. “In movies like this, you have to lean into the magic, you have to lean into a beautiful fantasy world in which good things happen, people support one another and fall quickly for one another, and disruptive forces that seek to exert power or make life harder for those in need will ultimately be defeated,” he adds. “Some people might call such occurrences ‘cheesy’ or ‘cringe,’ but you have to want to believe in the magic of that for these movies. I think, at Christmas, people do want to believe in that kind of magic.”

As such, Hainline tempered the cheese with genuinely human moments, naming a cadre of characters after his own family and friends. And it doesn’t hurt that the cast is replete with genuinely good actors. “It’s also so, so important that Jack wears his heart on his sleeve — and as someone who’d seen Dustin’s terrific work on Schitt’s Creek, among other performances, I knew he was going to be exactly right for the role,” Hainline says. “I was thrilled to work with Lacey for the first time on this; she’s been absolutely blessed with the ability to exude her natural kindness when the camera is rolling.”

“The cast is just so loaded,” he adds. “Craig Robinson is such a dream actor to play the sheriff — since I first saw him doing standup over 20 years ago, he’s always been so committed, unafraid to play with and lean into the absurdity of a joke. Joe Lo Truglio [as the cop]… look, I was of the age where I absolutely idolized anyone from The State, Wet Hot American Summer, Reno 911. I’m just grateful I didn’t geek out when I met him.”

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The film also has its share of delightful Easter eggs — for both Netflix Christmas movie fans and aging millennials alike — that create a kind of flummoxing paradox when you think about them too hard (I did). Like, when Kathy jokes that she’s not the Princess of Aldovia (a reference to 2017 smash-hit A Christmas Prince), then catches a snippet of Lindsey Lohan in 2022’s Falling for Christmas and remarks that she looks like someone she went to high school with (a Mean Girls reference). Do Netflix Christmas movies exist in the world of Hot Frosty? Is Mean Girls then reality? The mind boggles, not unlike the town’s elderly female contingent, when they see Jack’s borderline-upsetting abs.

In the end, though, Hot Frosty is all about perseverance — whether you’re a grieving widow learning to love again, a snowman learning how to wear a shirt, or a screenwriter learning to follow a dream. “That title will always make me laugh for the rest of my life,” Hainline says. “It tells you exactly what we’re going for tonally, lures you in… and then hopefully, once you’re watching, you laugh, and you care, and you get emotionally invested in these characters and in the people of this town. I’m really delighted that so many people have been enjoying our movie. Dream come true, honestly.”