Arnold Schwarzenegger will star in Another Christmas Movie
Turbo Man is coming back to theaters, but he’ll have a different costume this time. Deadline exclusively reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger is teaming up with Reacher star Alan Ritchson for the Christmas family comedy The Man with the Bag. The Amazon MGM Studios film finds Santa Claus enlisting the help of a former thief on his naughty list to help him find his stolen bag of presents; it’s being assumed that Arnold will play Santa, with Ritchson as the thief. Adam Shankman, who directed Hairspray, Rock of Ages, Bringing Down the House, and a bunch of TV show episodes, will direct The Man with the Bag from a script by Allan Rice, who has exclusively written for television (and not good television). There’s no release date, but I’d guess The Man with the Bag will arrive in theaters and/or Amazon Prime sometime around Christmas of 2025.
Man, I really want this movie to be good. I love Arnold, I love Reacher, and I really love Christmas. Arnold’s other Christmas movie, Jingle All the Way, is firmly on my Christmas Movie Watch List, and I’m glad so many people love it now. (It was not well received when it first came out.) And I love the idea of Arnold playing Santa, preferably one who’s a little less jolly and a little more punishing. But looking at the people behind The Man with the Bag, I’m not getting my hopes up too high. Allan Rice has only written for lousy-looking TV comedies, and Adam Shankman’s résumé is not much better. (Although, to be fair, Jingle All the Way director Brian Levant was not exactly a heavyweight either.) Then, there’s Arnold, who hasn’t done much of note since coming back from being a politician. His Netflix show, FUBAR, was so bad I stopped watching it halfway through the second episode; you know how awful something with Arnold has to be to make me quit on it? Now, he’s mostly parodying himself in those State Farm commercials, which… whatever. I’d love to see Arnold in something great again, or even decent, but it looks like the best thing he has going is finally getting True Lies on 4K and Blu-ray.
