November 18th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
Director Stephen Chiodo and producer Edward Chiodo are behind the new stop-motion animated special Alien Xmas. It premieres this Friday November 20th on Netflix. The Chiodo Bros. hope families make this a holiday season viewing tradition, right alongside the classics.
Jackson Murphy: Where did Alien Xmas come from and how did you first translate this into a very popular book?
Stephen Chiodo: I’ve always been a fan of the Rankin-Bass holiday specials back in the ‘60s, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. My brothers and I always had it in our minds to make a holiday special. Christmas is all about the spirit of giving, so that’s where the idea came from.
Edward Chiodo: At the time we were working with ABC Family doing interstitials for their “25 Days of Christmas” campaign. We were doing all these really fun bits with Santa. And then the executive we were working with said that they were always interested in specials. That’s when we started riffing around with the idea that Stephen was toying around with. Actually, it started off as a pitch for a holiday special. This is back in 2005. Stop-motion was popular but it’s kind of expensive to produce on a network budget. It just didn’t happen at that time. In our pitch, we had developed all this great concept artwork, and it was really the makings of the book.
JM: I remember those interstitials for the “25 Days of Christmas”. That’s really cool.
EC: And we were also doing Elf with Jon Favreau, and he saw the book. He’s a HUGE fan of stop-motion. He kind of fell in love with this story. We took it out with him, initially. Way back when, he was a big fan and supporter of the concept.
JM: That’s great. Jon Favreau is an executive producer on this, and he voices Obie as well. Take me back for just a moment to working on Elf. So many people remember… those special stop-motion sequences in it.
SC: It was very important to Jon to make a family holiday film that would last forever. And he really harkened back to Rankin-Bass. He felt that epitomized the holiday spirit. He wanted to bring that world of stop-motion into Elf before we get to New York City. We worked with him on trying to duplicate the style. I think he was very smart – very wise – in bringing in that nostalgia, reminding us of what it was like spending Christmas with our family when we were young by incorporating that stop-motion sequence at the top of the picture.
JM: Alien Xmas is 42 minutes. A lot of times, you can put 42 minutes into an hour timeframe (with commercials) on a network. When did you realize that Netflix would be the perfect home for this?
SC: It was really with Jon. We took it out with him early on. Then he had a little career intervention: Iron Man, Iron Man 2…
EC: The Jungle Book…
JM: The Lion King…
SC: Yeah. But it was always in the back of his mind. Whenever we’d see each other, he’d always ask about, ‘Hey, do you still have that project?’ Finally a point in time where he said, ‘Guys, with all the streaming things, I think we have a great home for this.’ He brought us to Netflix. It’s a Netflix original, produced for them. Time didn’t matter. Whatever worked for the title, Jon and Netflix for supportive with whatever we needed it to be.
JM: In watching it, what stuck out for me was: it’s modern in a sense of some of the themes you’re addressing. But also, it’s like a sci-fi spin on The Grinch – because of the whole ‘stealing Christmas’ aspect. Can you expand on that, and was The Grinch a real, direct inspiration?
SC: The Grinch was certainly an inspiration way back when. It’s one of the most beautiful holiday specials. But we kind of dealt with the evils of Christmas. There are some bad apples, and we needed a character to spin – start out kind of evil and then be filled with the magic of Christmas. It’s the story of X, and he’s a thieving little gray alien who goes on this mission to steal Earth’s gravity. Santa Claus and the elves are the first line of defense against an alien invasion. But during this adventure, he gets mistaken as a doll, and he’s infused with… the spirit of giving. And that turns him.
It’s very similar to The Grinch, but the Chiodo Brothers spin on it is that we like to mash two different genres together. So we took a classic holiday special and our love of sci-fi and mashed them together in a holiday special the likes of which you’ve never seen. We got robots and anti-gravity machines and elves fighting aliens. It’s quite an adventure.
EC: We spin the expectations. This could live as a nice little holiday special. It all takes place in Christmastown. But then you add that alien element to it. We toyed around with the idea that this was made in 1965 and was buried and now uncovered after all this time. That was kind of the approach. We did update the technology a little bit.
JM: There are still some of those moments where you know this is stop-motion that really work. For fans of stop-motion who love Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Laika and Aardman movies, what would they still be surprised to learn about what goes into the making of a big stop-motion production like this?
EC: Everything you see is hand-made… by extremely talented artists, from design to execution. It’s a loving, hand-made process. There was talk if we would be interested in doing this CG. And yeah, we could tell the same story, but it wouldn’t have had the same tangible magic that the stop-motion technique brings to it. And that’s what’s key. It’s real. These are real living toys moving around in a miniature world.
JM: I love the details of the costumes: the bows and [the evil] Z’s dress.
SC: We had a great group of people. We’re creating a world of characters, and that world is created all the way down to not just the costumes… but the jewelry. Z has bracelets and rings on. That attention to detail helps bring out character. Z the evil supreme leader is a great character. And Santa Claus is one you don’t normally see. He’s the ultimate optimist. But he actually gets put through the wringer on this little adventure. The elves are all unique. We tried to tap into what everyone’s memory of Christmas was.
JM: A couple of my favorite moments are with the reindeer: their funny lines and reactions. Could you do more with them in the future?
SC: It’s funny you mention that. We had a whole subplot about the reindeer getting ticked off that [Obie and Santa] invented the Super Sleigh and put them out of a job. We had a reindeer union. We had to cut it down length-wise because it was too ambitious a project. So we were able to keep that tone of a bit of a sore spot for the Super Sleigh with the reindeer. I’m glad you picked up on that because it’s just a small portion of what we hoped to do with that group of characters.
JM: I hope you do more with them down the line. And in translating this from book to screen, were there goals you had in mind in expanding or changing some things?
SC: Translating the book was a challenge because it was a really simple story. The book is only 16 pages. But we wanted to focus mostly on the heart of the story: X. He’s sort of like a Buster Keaton character. He’s this alien against the world. It’s this arc. That was the core of the story and we wanted to maintain that. We had big ideas on wanting to expand the battle and the robots and all the sci-fi elements, but we didn’t want to lose that core through line of X’s arc and the spirit of Christmas.
EC: And that’s where working with Jon really came in. He’s a great storyteller and kept bringing us back to the book.
SC: We did have a tendency to go bigger and more fantasy and more comedy and irreverence and Jon brought us back to the core of the story.
JM: The heart absolutely comes through. Were there any disagreements between the two of you to make sure something got in or happened?
SC: You would think so. Edward was a great producer in that he protected me from all that stuff happening around the production. I was able to focus more on working with the animators and the art department.
EC: We kind of knew what the boundaries were. My role was: when there are things Stephen really wanted, it was my job to fight them for him. Jon and Netflix were really supportive.
JM: What was the overall timeline from Day 1 of production to completing this?
EC: We started physical production in April 2019. We finished shooting right before Christmas break last year. And then we were in visual effects right up and through the pandemic. And we delivered it about a month ago.
JM: Now that it’s here, what are the holidays gonna be like for the Chiodos this year?
SC: We’re gonna get together as best as we can within our new world. I just wanna sit back and look at it like an audience. I’m trying to get away from it now. I wanna see if I can view it as an audience. I wanna see how it plays.
EC: I’m going to sleep! (laughs) We hope that Alien Xmas becomes a touchstone and families make it part of their holiday tradition.
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