It’s October and with Halloween around the corner it feels like holidays are here already. Every year there are new releases of holiday related films and today a new trailer for a Christmas feature starring Stranger Things star David Harbour was released. The film entitled Violent Night is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola whose last film to be released was the sci-fi feature What happened to Monday (2017).Violent Night is written by Josh Miller and Pat Casey, this duo wrote both Sonic the Hedgehog films.

The film is a dark action-comedy about Santa Claus. When a wealthy family is held hostage by mercenaries during Christmas Eve, Santa needs to take action.He finds himself into this situation while delivering a present to a girl in his good list. Santa is shown on the trailer as an action hero, which is a fresh way of representing him. After Stranger Things latest season, it is clear to everyone that Harbour is a great fit for an action character. His performance at this new feature has been praised by the director, Wirkola mentioned in an interview:

 “If there’s one thing I can’t wait for people to see, it’s his performance of Santa Claus because it truly is something special…playing Santa is an intimidating thing. With so many movies about him, how do you make it different and unique and fresh?”

The trailer resembles other action films such as Die hard and John Wick and according to the director it is full of references to other Christmas features and Easter eggs. The cast of the film includes Cam Gigandet (Twilight), Beverly D’Angelo (American History X) who worked in some holiday films in the 80’s and John Leguizamo (Encanto).

An advanced exclusive screening of the film will be happening during the New York Comic Con on October 7^th.

Violent Night will be available in theaters December 2.

You can watch David Harbour as Santa here.