How many Hallmark Christmas movies are there?!

On the latest episode of the podcast Scriptnotes, the hosts, John August and Craig Mazin, were talking about Hallmark Christmas movies. Craig asked, “How many do we think there have been?” to which John replied, “I think Stephen Follows, the data expert, could generate a database“.

As many of you will know, John is the screenwriter of the recent Disney Aladdin movie, and so *poof* just like that, I was summoned. It must have been a perk he received in his writing contract, meaning that today’s article counts as one of his three film data wishes.

And I’m glad he did, as it is a fascinating topic. I looked at all the TV movies made for/by Hallmark since 2000.

What is a Hallmark TV movie?

A “TV movie” differs from a feature film in that it’s made specifically for television, usually with a shorter runtime and smaller budget. The turnaround on such productions is a lot quicker, meaning that they can often respond to changes in tastes or news quicker than a traditional feature film can.

They are seen by many as being lower on the status hierarchy than ‘proper films’, but in this age of straight-to-Netflix, it could be argued that all such lines are being blurred. They provide work for countless writers, filmmakers, and crew, while delighting millions of viewers.

The Hallmark Channel in the US is especially famous for its TV movies, meaning that some may use “Hallmark” as a verb, such as “They Hallmarked that storyline” implying they turned it into a sentimental, feel-good scenario with predictable, heartwarming results. And the pure zenith of a “Hallmark movie” has to be their Christmas-themed productions which offer festive settings, seasonable joy and happy endings.

Let’s start our journey into this Dante-esque circle by looking at how many TV movies Hallmark is making. Since the year 2000, I found 864 such movies. Not only that, but production has been ramping up, meaning that they are, on average, now producing more than one new movie each and every week.

What type of TV movies does Hallmark make?

If you had to guess which genre Hallmark makes most frequently, I don’t think it would be hard. Yup, it’s romance. In the past few years, nine out of ten Hallmark TV movies are classed as being a romance on IMDb.

Here’s a much harder question – what is the second genre Hallmark most over-index in?

As in, when we compare the genres of Hallmark TV movies with all feature films made worldwide, which is the genre after romance that Hallmark relatively overproduces?

I feel that this would be a question that a true Hallmark fan would be able to watch whereas the rest of us mere mortals are left out in the cold.

It’s Westerns. Not many Hallmark movies have a Western setting (just 2.6%), but that’s a much higher rate than all movies made (at just 0.6%).

If you’re interested in watching weepy Westerns, then may I suggest you check out The Last Cowboy, The Trail to Hope Rose, Angel and the Bad Man, The Gambler, the Girl and the Gunslinger, or Our Wild Hearts, among others.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hallmark is really not interested in making thrillers (15.2% of global production but just 1.2% of Hallmark) or science fiction (4.1% vs. 0.1%).

When are Hallmark TV movies released?

As we start to narrow in on our core Christmas-y question, we turn to when these movies are released. Although we saw that just over one a week is being produced, they are not released evenly throughout the year.

Over a third of Hallmark TV movies are released in the final two months of the year, with November accounting for more than one in five of all such releases.

And this is not a recent phenomenon. Over the past fifteen years, the winter bias has been strong at Hallmark.

When are Hallmark TV movies set?

Given that Hallmark knows when a movie will be released, it makes sense that the stories within the movies are seasonably relevant. When we look at the plots of such movies, we can see that they massively over-index towards being set in wintertime.

The chart above looks at all the seasons I could determine from the long plots or synopsis. But some don’t mention any kind of season, so it wouldn’t appear.

However, the chart below looks at the percentage of Hallmark movies, which say they’re set at Christmas as a percentage for all Hallmark TV movies, even if they don’t mention seasons.

As you can see, about half of all of their production is Christmas-themed movies.

So how many Christmas Hallmark TV movies are there?

Enough careful analysis – let’s cut to the chase with John and Craig’s query.

I found a total of 307 Hallmark Christmas movies, with production reaching an average of 30 a year over the past few years.

As Hallmark continues to pump out more festive films each year, it’s clear their formula is working for them and their audience. With no signs of slowing down, it seems the Hallmark Christmas movie tradition is here to stay.

Notes

I looked at all 864 TV movies as listed on IMDb and attributed to Hallmark which were not concerts or other such ‘specials’. I then analyse the plots and metadata. I didn’t look at the opinions of film critics as the vast majority of these movies were not covered by such critics. They are on the wrong side of the “Is this really a movie?’ fence, according to critics.

I’m very grateful to John and Craig for releasing me out of my cave in order to do this data exploration.

This exploration took me far deeper down the Hallmark rabbit hole than I was expecting, so I will have to return next week for part two, looking at the themes and quality of Hallmark movies. Stay tuned, folks!