This Iconic Festive Watch Was Never Intended To Be A Christmas Movie, Director Says

I reckon the Venn diagram of people who insist that action movie Die Hard is a Christmas movie and those who love telling you a tomato is a fruit is a circle. 

They’re both technically right, but come on ― it’s not like the Bruce Willis hit is as festive as, say, classic seasonal flick The Holiday. 

Except that apparently, the movie’s writer and director Nancy Myers really didn’t think the 2006 film was meant to be watched around, well, the holidays. 

Speaking on the Hollywood Gold podcast, the mind behind the Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, and Jack Black classic admitted she “never ever saw it as a holiday movie ever in my life”. 

“I know it’s called The Holidaybecause they’re taking a holiday, but it could have been called that if it was in the summer,” she said, seemingly forgetting the snowy, chocolate box English cottage Cameron Diaz’s character visits (or the “alone at Christmas” last-minute reasoning for both main characters travels). 

Indeed she admitted she “was a little shocked at how much Christmas was in it” after re-watching the film recently.

“I never thought it would be, you know, a movie that you watched during the holidays,” she continued, sharing she “didn’t think of it that way”.

“I just really wanted to tell the story about these people... I set it at Christmas because that can be lonely,” she revealed. 

“And the holidays seem like a good time to deal with those issues... so it was that, not, ‘Hey, I think I’ll make a festive holiday movie.’ Not at all.”

Hats off to a Refinery29 writer who called it in 2020. “It’s not a Christmas movie, it’s a holiday movie,” they wrote at the time. 

You really and truly could have fooled me.