Broadway talent will help bring a New York City tradition to Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas.
Hallmark Channel has announced that A Holiday Spectacular, a new Christmas movie featuring the iconic Radio City Rockettes, will join the 2022 Countdown to Christmas lineup.
In the New York City spirit of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular tradition, the movie will feature several familiar Broadway faces, including Ginna Claire Mason (Wicked) and Tony nominee Derek Klena (Jagged Little Pill). Also featured in the cast will be Academy Award nominee Ann-Margret, who famously starred as Kim in the 1963 film version of Bye Bye Birdie, and Eve Plumb, best known as Jan from The Brady Bunch.
The film was shot on location both in upstate New York and at Radio City Music Hall. The Rockettes were choreographed by their director and choreographer Julie Branam and will be featured throughout the film in various performance numbers and speaking roles.
A Holiday Spectacular is described as follows: "The story is set in 1958 when a Philadelphia heiress named Maggie (Mason) puts her high-society wedding plans, to a man she doesn't love, on hold in order to sneak up to New York City and make her secret dream come true: dancing live on stage in the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. While her family thinks she's staying in New York City with an 'approved' friend from boarding school, Maggie is living a completely different life than she's ever known. She falls in love with New York and dancing with the Rockettes. Maggie soon feels caught between two worlds, made even more complicated by her chance encounter with young U.S. Navy photographer John (Klena). Will Maggie find the courage to tell her family what she wants for her future instead of accepting the future that was decided for her?"