Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Reacher’s Alan Ritchson are making festive frolic The Man With The Bag, hitting Prime Video this December. Update: Blimey, has it really been two years since we last wrote about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next Christmas movie? Apparently so. The Austrian star, best known for his 1996 festive staple Jingle All The Way, ... The Man With The Bag | Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas movie coming to Prime Video in December
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Reacher’s Alan Ritchson are making festive frolic The Man With The Bag, hitting Prime Video this December.
Update: Blimey, has it really been two years since we last wrote about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next Christmas movie? Apparently so. The Austrian star, best known for his 1996 festive staple Jingle All The Way, is teaming up with Jack Reacher's Alan Ritchson for another holiday romp, The Man With The Bag.
Thanks to Deadline, we now have a release date: the 2nd December 2026. It’s going straight to Prime Video by the sounds of things.
Confirming our earlier theorising, Schwarzenegger will play St Nick (or Santa, or Father Christmas) while Ritchson will play a thief named Vance who helps the old chap track down his sack, which is bulging with festive gifts. Will Vance convince Santa to take his name off the ‘naughty’ list? Tune in this Christmas to find out.
Our original story follows…
13th March 2024: Of all the films Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in across his long career, 1996’s Jingle All The Way was undoubtedly one of them. And, almost 30 years on from that festive comedy, it’s announced that the Austrian Oak is making another Christmas film, this time for Amazon MGM Studios.
It’s called The Man With The Bag, and according to The Hollywood Reporter’s plot summary, sees Santa Claus on the hunt from his stolen, enchanted bag. This leads Santa to “team up with Vance, a reformed thief and denizen of the naughty list” to find it, with Vance’s daughter and a “team of misfit elves” also taken along for the adventure.
We’re pretty sure that the container Santa used to shuttle his gifts around is more commonly referred to as a sack than a bag, but it’s probably a reference to the old Christmas song that we definitely didn’t learn about thanks to Google. A film with a title like The Man With The Sack would also likely have led to film outlets making all sorts of puerile jokes, which of course is something we’d never do here.
Podcast: Lethal Weapon (1987) and Jingle All The Way (1996)
The project was previously announced last year, when Alan Ritchson – the actor who shot to fame thanks to the success of the Jack Reacher series, also for Amazon/MGM – was attached as one of its stars. Behind the script is Allan Rice, and behind the camera (directing) is Adam Shankman, a former dancer and choreographer who’s made such films as The Wedding Planner, Rock Of Ages and Disenchanted.
There’s no word on who exactly is playing which character in the film so far as we can discover, but Ritchson would make a logical choice as Vance, the reformed thief. That just leaves Santa. Arnold Schwarzenegger has to play Santa, doesn’t he? It’s a part he was born to play.
There’s no word as to when The Man With The Bag is due for release, but we’d put strong money on December 2024 or 2025. Call it a hunch.
More on Schwarzenegger’s latest festive adventure as we get it. In the meantime: why is santa’s sack so full? Because of all the gifts, you clot.
