There are endless reasons to love the holiday season, including Christmas movies both new and old. This year, Netflix has dropped off romantic comedies like Meet Me Next Christmas and Hot Frosty to entertain subscribers, meanwhile, Disney+ is taking a family-friendly approach to their festive content. On Nov. 15, the streaming giant shared its latest short film, An Almost Christmas Story, featuring newcomer Estella Madrigal as the voice of Luna, a lost little girl. The star-studded cast also includes Jim Gaffigan plays Papa Owl, Alex Ross Perry is Dave the Dog and Natasha Lyonne voice Pat. It wouldn’t be a Disney movie without great music, which John C. Reilly delivers on as The Folk Singer, bringing audiences two original songs to further spread Christmas cheer.
Get In the Holiday Spirit With ‘An Almost Christmas Story’
An Almost Christmas Story comes from the minds of director David Lowery and Academy Award winning producer Alfonso Cuarón. The latter previously worked on Oscar-nominated short Christmas films Le Pupille and The Shepherd for Disney+. Lowery, also no stranger to working with the streamer, used a blend of cardboard and paper esthetics to tell his story. “Once we decided to make the film an animated film, even before it was fully animated – because at one point it was going to be a kind of hybrid. I decided I wanted New York City to be made entirely out of cardboard, and that was the inciting incident for this entire project,” he explained in a recent interview.
It turns out the short film was first planned as a live-action project, and saw many transitions before reaching the finished product. “At the point at which it became animation, it went through different stages of animation. We were going to do it with puppets and then it was a hybrid that eventually became fully CG,” Lowery told The Walt Disney Company. Despite the many changes, Cuarón remained supportive of his collaborator the whole way through. “How could we push it forward? How can we make it feel unlike anything else anyone has ever seen before? He trusted me to make the best movie I could make. But he would always give just little suggestions that I could take or leave along the way that really helped form it into what it finally became,” the director shared.
Rocky the Rockefeller Owl Inspired Disney’s Latest Short
In An Almost Christmas Story, an owl named Moon unexpectedly gets stuck in a Christmas tree heading toward the famous Rockefeller Plaza. As he attempts to escape the notoriously busy city, he befriends a lost little girl named Luna, who joins him on “a heartwarming adventure, discovering the magic of the holiday season and forming an unlikely bond as they journey back home to their parents.” While many Disney stories are purely fiction, this short film takes inspiration from the real life story of Rocky the Rockefeller Owl, who made a surprise journey to the Big Apple back in 2020.
Rocky is a Saw-whet, the smallest of her species in the northeast. In the first November of the COVID-19 pandemic, some positive news came after the adorable critter was rescued from a 75-foot tall Norway spruce Oneonta in upstate New York after traveling 170 miles into the city. Despite not having food or water in days, Rocky began to recover as she received medical care from Ravensbeard Wildlife Center. Once the bird’s condition improved, they opted to release her on facility grounds upstate rather than force a protentially traumatic return trip to Oneonta. “Rocky’s release was a success!” her temporary caretakers wrote on Facebook at the time. “She is a tough little bird and we’re happy to see her back in her natural habitat. We are sure that Rocky will feel your love and support through her journey south.”
