In Tinsel Town, a fading Hollywood action star accidentally signs on for a Christmas pantomime in the quiet English town of Stoneford. With a premise as delicious as a cup of eggnog, it’s the perfect blend of comedy, carnage and Christmas.
“I’m a huge Eighties and Nineties action movie fan and I’m a huge musical theatre fan,” remarks producer Matt Williams. “And this was a script that took to extremities what I love about entertainment.”
Written by Frazer Flintham and Adam Brown, Tinsel Town centres around the very theatrical world of Christmas pantos, with Dames and Dad Jokes aplenty.
“It was a brilliant idea,” adds Williams. “It was obvious that it was a film that needed to be made.” Straight away, he sent it to his regular collaborators over at Sky Originals, with whom he’d already made the 2021 festive movie Last Train To Christmas. The script was met with similar enthusiasm, and the production began to take shape.
Needing a talented director to bring this to life, Williams contacted Chris Foggin, his collaborator on the hugely popular Bank of Dave (2023) and Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (2025).
Raised in Britain’s northeast, Foggin grew up watching pantomimes every year at the Sunderland Empire. “I’m a big fan of panto,’” he says. “I’ve seen them all. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella. I think that they’re a good British tradition. They keep theatres alive.”
For Foggin, he kept coming back to one word during the making of Tinsel Town: heartwarming. “Heartwarming is the word I used constantly. How can I make this more heartwarming?” says the director, who says he drew on the family-friendly spirit of films like Paddington and Nativity. “If it brings people together to watch it, I’ll be so pleased,” he adds. “I hope it resonates with families. That’s what I set out to do.” Matt Williams agrees. “It’s emotional, yet it’s funny,” the producer says. “It’s got laughter, dance,
comedy, sadness…everything you need at Christmas.”
Brad Mac (Kiefer Sutherland) is a self-absorbed Hollywood movie star, famed for the action franchise ‘Killing Time’. But when the series is retired, he is forced to look for a new challenge. His agent sends him to do theatre in the U.K., but to his dismay, he soon discovers that this is not Shakespeare on the London stage. Cast as Buttons in Cinderella, Brad is horrified to learn he’s contractually bound to a pantomime – a British tradition he’s never even heard of. But as he meets the townsfolk of Stoneford, all of whom are
devoted to this annual British Christmas tradition, Brad is forced to leave his ego in check. Can he pull off a panto and bring the local community together? Oh no he can’t! Oh yes he can!
With the script needing further finessing, Williams and Foggin brought in Piers Ashworth, who had not only worked on the Bank of Dave movies but also on two other celebrated feel-good British films, the Williams-produced Save the Cinema (2022) and the Foggin-directed Fisherman’s Friends (2019). Ashworth received the script just as Bank of Dave 2 was finishing up, offering him the chance to return to familiar themes, this time in a story with Christmas at its heart.
“It’s about the power of community,” says Ashworth. “And that was what Bank of Dave was about. That was what Save the Cinema was about. That was what Fisherman’s Friends was about. And it’s not just how great it is to build a community, but it’s about people standing up for each other and standing together against external pressures.
Here, maybe they’re standing up against the commercialisation of Christmas, that that somehow lessens the joy of Christmas.”
Joining up with Williams, fellow producer Pascal Degove notes: “It’s a typical fish-out of-water story with the main character, Brad Mac, a washed-out Hollywood star trying to revive his career, and he thinks he’s going to be on stage in London, like a lot of big American stars do, to show their craft.”
For Degove, it makes for the perfect family entertainment. “It’s something I’d want to watch with my kids every Christmas.”
At its core is the very Anglo-centric tradition of pantomime, says Ashworth. “You just say ‘pantomime’ and people have an image in their heads of what it is. And of course, there’s good pantomimes and bad pantomimes. But in a way the nice thing about that part of English culture…the bad pantomimes are almost better than the good ones, because you’re almost expecting it to be slightly bad. You’re almost expecting things to go wrong!”
Crafting the Musical Numbers
To craft the musical numbers, the production brought in choreographer Adam Crossley. As soon as he read the script, Crossley was smitten. “I thought ‘This is my kind of humour. This is something I can really get on board with. I really want to be a part of this.’” Recruiting regular collaborator Lydia Bradd as his assistant choreographer, Crossley immediately began working on the dance numbers. “There was inspiration from the script already,” Crossley adds, noting they drew on both traditional “panto elements” as well as the “music video” format. “We go a bit hyperreal in what it is that we’re doing.”
Chris Foggin – Director
Chris Foggin’s latest film, Bank of Dave 2, recently released on Netflix to great fanfare and immediately took the No 1 spot in the UK – it also heralded a return to the top 10 of its predecessor Bank of Dave (which Chris also directed). Additional feature work includes This is Christmas and Kids in Love. Shorts include That Night and Friend Request Pending. On the TV front, his work includes “Cold Feet” and lead director on second series of crime drama “Traces” for ITV/Quay Street. Chris was named as a UK Stars of
Tomorrow by Screen International in 2014.
Piers Ashworth – Writer
Piers Ashworth is a British-born screenwriter, producer, and director. His most recent feature The Bank of Dave. He co-wrote hit film Fisherman’s Friends (available on Amazon) and its sequel Fisherman’s Friends: One and All. It has also been turned into a hit musical. Along with regular collaborators Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard Piers adapted the Noël Coward play Blithe Spirit for producer Peter Snell with Canal+ and Protagonist for release on Sky Cinema. His feature Save the Cinema was released on Sky Cinema in 2021. Piers is also known for writing the St Trinian’s films (the first of which went on to become the second highest grossing independent feature ever made in the UK) and Burke and Hare.
