Christmas Break-In

Duluth threw a blizzard in April, then sold the kids DVDs.

On a Wednesday in December 2018, Marshall School packed Fregeau Auditorium to watch itself get robbed. Christmas Break-In had shot there in April. Nine-year-old Cameron Seely, fresh off playing Hugh Jackman's youngest daughter in The Greatest Showman, spent the last day before winter break as Izzy, the kid whose parents miss pickup. Denise Richards and Sean O'Bryan play those parents. Danny Glover, of Lethal Weapon, plays Ray, the janitor who also teaches her guitar. Three crooks hide from the storm in what they think is an empty school, grab Ray, latestnetflix.com argues, and lose to a nine-year-old.

Utah's Koan Inc. did not come for the lake. Executive producer Gil Aglaure said they could have chosen anywhere with snow, and that Minnesota's Snowbate rebate made the call easy. Head of School Kevin Breen watched the crew stand on the front lawn, look at Lake Superior, and start inventing extra exteriors. Lincoln Park, downtown, and Spirit Mountain slipped into a story that never names Duluth. Then the weather did the rest. Duluth took 13.4 inches on April 14 and 15, with wind, which is how a holiday movie shot in spring got a real blizzard.

As many as 50 Marshall students worked spring break as extras. The second week on set went nights so class days stayed clean. Seely hung around with them. Ailie King, 12, from Superior, later spotted herself on the DVD and remembered the crew feeding kids the fake chatter line "peas and carrots, watermelon." Director Michael Kampa, executive producer Tanya Silver, and Dawson Ehlke, who plays Izzy's brother, all grew up in Minnesota. They came back for the screening. Students clapped when a robber, hunting valuables in a classroom, muttered that it was a shame teachers are not paid more. Quieter laughs hit Glover's line that Marshall used to be a prison, and the parents trudging through a Northland storm in clothes that would not last a block. Fifteen percent of DVD sales that night went back to the school.

The booking is the gossip. Glover as a school janitor in a Utah indie. Richards as the mom who cannot get off work. Seely as a Home Alone kid with a tennis-ball cannon. Common Sense Media's Barbara Shulgasser-Parker called it a feisty-kid, dopey-robber "Home Alone wannabe" and gave it two stars out of five. She asked why Ray drives back through the same storm that traps everyone else, and why the parents take forever to reach a local school. Radio Times sold the same hook for Netflix in 2019, "Home Alone at school," and listed Glover, Richards, and Seely as the names that would get a family to press play. Gravitas later took all rights and pointed the film at theaters and VOD for September 6, 2019. Acquisitions VP Tony Piantedosi promised it would charm audiences of all ages. Covenant had already put a DVD in stores in November 2018. The official trailer still opens on Izzy saying being forgotten by her parents happens all the time.

Nobody leaked a salary. Nobody claimed Glover was slumming. The paper trail is simpler. A Utah company needed snow in April and a tax rebate. Duluth gave them both, a hill school, a blizzard they did not have to fake, and fifty extras who later bought the disc.