Why Disney's 'Santa Clause 2' Took Eight Years to Get Made
By Tom King Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Updated Nov. 1, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET
It only took a year to churn out the "Harry Potter" sequel. Even Francis Ford Coppola had "The Godfather -- Part II" in theaters less than three years after his Oscar-winning original.

And then there's "The Santa Clause."

A full eight years after Disney won over audiences with the 1994 holiday hit about a selfish divorced dad who turns into St. Nick, its sequel finally shows up in movie theaters Friday. The tortured path of "Santa Clause 2" involves an initially reluctant star, three changes in top studio management and countless rewritten scripts. And after all that time, seven credited writers and some $60 million dollars, what did they come up with? A twist on the old "evil twin" plot, one of Hollywood's favorite standbys (see review).

For Disney, "Santa 2" is an important part of its crucial holiday season. With "Harry" coming back, competition in the family market will be tough. And industry execs say it will be hard for either "Santa 2" or Disney's other holiday offering, the animated "Treasure Planet," to match the box office of last year's "Monsters Inc." "Santa" star Tim Allen has a lot riding on the project, too, after flopping in recent movies.

Holiday Hat Trick
It was all very different in the 1994 holiday season, when "The Santa Clause" was the No. 1 movie in the country, and Mr. Allen, in a rare trifecta, also had the No. 1 TV show ("Home Improvement") and the No. 1 book (his autobiography, "Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man"). Made for just $18 million, "Santa" grossed nearly $145 million. At the time, Disney was so grateful it gave Mr. Allen a Porsche as a bonus. Ordering up a sequel was a no-brainer.

But there was a big problem: At first, Mr. Allen didn't want to do it. Then-Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth recalls, "Tim just wasn't ready or interested" in doing the sequel. "I thought, 'How are we going to top the first one?'" Mr. Allen says. "I didn't want to get into that suit unless the script was terrific." He says he got into several disputes with the studio, mostly over him pushing for a "darker" story. He suggested, for instance, that Santa's son become a teen troublemaker, but "they were really against him having any kind of problem."

Early ideas for a sequel didn't excite the star or even many at the studio. Execs grabbed on to the theme of balancing work and family, but couldn't quite make it go. One script had Mr. Allen and his top elf mistakenly granting Santa powers to a burglar, but "we never really nailed it," says Nina Jacobson, president of Disney's motion-picture group.

Mr. Allen, meanwhile, wasn't having great success in other roles. Although he scored big providing the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the "Toy Story" animated movies, none of his live-action films came close to grossing $100 million. Films such as "Jungle2Jungle" and "For Richer or Poorer" suggested his TV persona was too ingrained for moviegoers to accept him in other parts. (The "everyman" he played in "Santa," on the other hand, was similar to his sitcom role.)

Suiting Up
After seeking well-publicized treatment for a drinking problem, and separating from his wife in 1999, Mr. Allen neared a deal to once again don the Santa suit. Disney agreed to pay him $12 million upfront for the sequel and a million or two to star in another picture. In late 2000, the studio sent theaters a preview for what it was then calling "The Santa Clause 2: Escape Clause," announcing the film's opening at Christmas 2001. Shortly afterward, however, Disney sent the script back to surgery, delaying the film yet another year.

Then came the "bad Santa." Peter Schneider, who succeeded Mr. Roth as studio chairman, suggested Mr. Allen play two Santas -- the good one, and an evil one who tries to destroy Christmas. The plot stuck, even though Mr. Schneider left Disney last year, to pursue theater ventures. Mr. Allen says he insisted the "bad Santa" have a plastic look, like a toy. "Botox Santa, as I call him," he says. "I didn't want an 'evil twin' ... that's soap-opera stuff."

The studio hired even more writers -- including some whose names aren't onscreen. Industry execs say "Murphy Brown" creator Diane English, for example, was brought in to work on a romantic storyline for Santa. And, in the final script, Disney did allow Santa's son to get on the "naughty" list -- for spray-painting graffiti at his high school.

Mr. Allen's other film for Disney this year -- "Big Trouble" -- was exactly that. A comedy featuring a bomb on a plane, the film was pulled after last year's Sept. 11 attacks. When it finally opened this April, it tanked.

The studio is confident, however, that moviegoers will flock to see Mr. Allen back in the sleigh. Getting the movie made is "really about will more than anything else," says Dick Cook, who today is chairman of Disney Studios. "Fortunately we made a movie we're all very proud of."

Waiting eight years, the studio says, actually gave them certain advantages; special-effects technology allowed "more expressive" reindeer this time. Not everything has progressed, however; Comet's flatulence gag in "Santa 2" could have been done decades ago.

Getting Personal
Talk about bad-boy behavior: Director Michael Bay has forced the shutdown, for two weeks, of production of "Bad Boys II" so he can tend to personal business.

Sony Pictures, which is bankrolling the $120 million sequel, agreed to the shutdown before filming in Miami began in August. (The sequel reteams Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the 1995 picture that made them both movie stars.) Mr. Bay, the director of such action films as "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor," apparently needed the two weeks off to tend to legal proceedings relating to a suit he filed last year against Merrill Lynch. (He claimed reckless trading sunk his portfolio.)

But the shutdown is now costing Sony, albeit not unexpectedly. Industry execs estimate the shutdown will add about a half-million dollars to the already sky-high budget. Members of the crew, for instance, aren't being paid their salaries for the two weeks, but they are being paid their per diem and housing allowances for having relocated to Miami. The studio is also paying holding costs to rental companies that have leased the production trucks and other supplies.

A Sony spokesman says "the hiatus has had a minimal effect" on the production. Mr. Bay didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

Entertaining Questions
Q. One writer who gets screen credit on "The Truth About Charlie" is Peter Joshua, which I think was the name of the Cary Grant character in the original "Charade." Is this some Hollywood in-joke?

A. Sort of. Peter Stone, who wrote 1963's "Charade," on which "The Truth About Charlie" is based, was awarded a credit on the new film by the Writers Guild of America. But because he didn't do any work on this adaptation, he chose to use the pseudonym Peter Joshua, a Universal Pictures spokesman says. Good catch: Joshua was indeed the name Mr. Grant's character in "Charade."