Screenwriter Stephen Vagg and director Louise Alston are collaborating on a new holiday rom-com, with Date for Christmas optioned by Los Angeles production house 12 Helpful Hands Productions.
The story follows a woman who, in order to please her dying mother, convinces her workplace rival to impersonate her fiance over Christmas. However, complications arise when the mother’s health suddenly improves.
Dureyshevar, president of 12 Helpful Hands Productions, is on board as producer of the film, which is being shopped to streamers.
A husband and wife team, Vagg and Alston’s last feature together, Jucy, was released on Netflix more than a decade ago. Vagg has since written across Home and Away and Neighbours, which Alston has also worked on as director, along with other series, such as Stage Mums, Slut, and Beige Brown Poet, and features, The Will and Resisting Roots.
Alston told IF Date for Christmas was one of multiple scripts that Vagg had worked on at their Sherman Oaks apartment in LA across the past few years that was now being optioned, adding they were “pretty excited” to be moving forward with the rom-com.
“I love rom-coms a lot and I feel like [the genre] is a freaking giant,” she said.
“It’s something that people are really loving and there is so much to say in rom-coms at the moment.
“They were huge in the ’90s and then they went in a ruder direction in the ’00s with [filmmakers like] Judd Apatow, and now I feel like the well-made rom-com is ready to come back and there are things to say.”
Vagg said Date for Christmas was inspired by the “wonderful Hollywood screwball rom-coms” he used to watch on TV “courtesy of Bill Collins back in the day”, as well as “Australian spiritual heirs”, such as the “Vicki the vet-Dr Simon romance arc on A Country Practice and the Shirley Ann Richards-Billy Rayes subplot in Dad and Dave Come to Town“.
The deal for Date for Christmas was put together by Vagg and Alston’s manager, Sean Dubravac, at Entertainment Lab LA.