SUBJ: more holiday movie pitches
Dearest Gwen,
I do hope your holidays are going well and you’re still enjoying your role as Head of Holiday Content Development at Hallmark Channel.
I know in your last seven email replies you mentioned my story pitches “weren’t a good fit for the channel,” but I really think each idea in this new batch has the “hallmark” of a holiday classic that is sure to bring joy to your viewers and, if we strike a deal soon, help cover the cost of my sinus medication.
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Hearts Aflame
A successful woman reluctantly returns to her small-town home during the holidays and learns the true meaning of family when she re-ignites a romance with her brother, the local candlemaker.
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Jinglehooves
A mysterious reindeer begins appearing in the back yards of any ladies who refuse to knit mittens for the annual mitten drive.
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A Feast of Plenty
A widower and his high school crush find love as they revive their hometown’s struggling harvest festival by teaching the community that true bounty comes when you harvest human organs.
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Pictures of Yule
The only way a divorced housewife can convince the new town councilman to approve the budget for the annual sledding contest is by letting him take pictures of her elbows.
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Home Remedy
When a big city doctor returns home to help his family’s struggling restaurant during Christmas, he discovers that his mother’s ham has caused a botulism outbreak. The only way he can save Christmas is by using a tonic made from pine needles and realizing that conventional medicine is a hoax perpetrated by the deep state.
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A Touch of Magic
A group of unpopular high-schoolers realize that their town’s Christmas hasn’t been the same ever since old Mr. Kristof stopped dressing as Santa for Winterfest. In order to convince the ornery Mr. Kristof to don his Santa suit and save Christmas, the kids must enlist the help of Jack, the popular jock who is 18 and legally allowed to be within 500 feet of Mr. Kristof.
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A Cup of Peggy’s
A woman named Peggy is the owner of a cozy coffee shop in a small town where everybody else is also named Peggy. So when she calls out the name for the coffee order, everybody starts laughing. That’s as far as I got.
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Inn the Spirit
When Kate, the owner of a small-town inn, finds out that Kacey, her friend from high school, has booked the inn for a holiday getaway with her fiancée Prince Kale of Kandelaria, Kate is jealous of Kacey and convinces her friend Kade (Prince Kale’s long-lost identical twin brother) to pose as her own boyfriend during their stay. But Kade develops a secret crush on Kate and makes a wish on a magical ornament for Kate to love him back, but when Kale accidentally breaks the ornament, the wish transfers to Kacey but also makes it so Kacey and Kate switch bodies, but it’s fine because then Kade and Kale switch places so Kade and Kate head back to Kandelaria so I’m pretty sure that evens everything out.
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My Kerchief Overfloweth
In old timey Dickensian England, the young, attractive owner of a small-town flower shop realizes she can give people the Christmas spirit by sneezing on them. But she has a hard time making herself sneeze, so she tries to catch a cold by kissing a hunky customer who she can tell has a cold because he’s wearing a scarf. His sneezes end up having the Christmas spirit thing too, so they go around sneezing on people. Eventually they fall in love and the whole town is infected with the flu as well as the Christmas spirit. It ends with a little kid saying “God bless us, every one!”
(If you don’t like the old time England setting, the sneezes can also make them time travel. But they still keep their accents and big hats in modern times. Or not.)
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The Heart Won’t Cease. The Heart Won’t Desist
An aspiring TV writer learns the true meaning of Christmas when he shows up at a network executive’s doorstep on Christmas eve and then, instead of calling the cops like last year, the executive invites him in for eggnog and says he can stay until New Year’s but by then he’s basically part of the family so he just lives there for good.