While the rest of the world was waiting to see if Taylor Swift would make it to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas from her “Eras Tour” concert in Tokyo to watch Travis Kelce, two women were invested in this year’s game for a different reason.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Samantha DiPippo, Hallmark’s senior vice president for programming, was at a watch party texting friends and fellow Hallmark executives.
Their eyes were on the Kansas City Chiefs, a centerpiece of the NFL season if not for a star player’s new courtship with the world’s biggest pop performer, then for entering their fourth Super Bowl in five seasons. Those folks at Hallmark, a mainstay for romance lovers, had some ideas. Could another Lombardi Trophy for the Chiefs help bring those ideas to fruition?
They were about to see — and the game was a nail-biter. The San Francisco 49ers held on to an early lead, 10-3, going into halftime. After Kansas City pulled ahead in the third quarter, the score was tied 19-19 by the fourth, sending the championship game into overtime.
DiPippo’s phone was blowing up with messages from her team. Then, thanks to the “power of the Chiefs,” and, she says, “a little bit of magic,” Kansas City won 25-22 after a touchdown pass from quarterback Patrick Mahomes to wide receiver Mecole Hardman.
“Candice (DiLavore, senior manager at Hallmark) and I are just texting back and forth thinking, ‘I hope this happens. I hope this happens,’” DiPippo recalls.
“As it got closer and closer, I was like, ‘Are we making a movie?’”
The answer to that question became a resounding yes. That movie is Hallmark’s “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” premiering on the network Nov. 30. The film was shot over a period of about 15 days on location in Kansas City, including three days at Arrowhead Stadium.
As it got closer and closer, I was like, ‘Are we making a movie?’”
Hallmark executive Samantha DiPippo
TODAY visited the set of the film in July to meet the stars and see Jenna Bush Hager make her film debut with a cameo. This was all while witnessing firsthand the hundreds of extras, dozens of Christmas trees and four football fields worth of lights to make, in the words of DiPippo, “the largest movie that Hallmark Channel’s ever done.”
A match made in Hallmark heaven
“Holiday Touchdown” was announced in June as part of Hallmark’s 2024 “Countdown to Christmas” lineup, which included a new partnership between the Chiefs and Hallmark.
You’re forgiven if you thought this movie would follow the true-to-life plot laid out by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s romance, though.
For the uninitiated, the Swift-Kelce timeline looks like this: In September 2023, Swift attended a Chiefs home game after rumors that Swift and tight end Travis Kelce were an item. Kelce notably had attended her “Eras Tour” show in Kansas City just months before, and after the concert, used his podcast to tell the world that he tried (and failed) to give Swift his number.
The rest, as many know, is history.
Though Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s story produced an audience with an appetite for more football romance, “Holiday Touchdown” isn’t about a player and a pop star (Lifetime has that movie); this follows a Chiefs employee and an NFL super fan.
The screenwriter of “Holiday Touchdown,” Julie Sherman Wolfe, who’s written more than 20 films for Hallmark, says she’s always wanted to write “a big football movie.” The offer for this project came just a week after the Super Bowl, when her team, the 49ers, experienced that crushing defeat.
When tackling the script, Wolfe says she leaned into her own family’s unique superstitions and traditions.
“It really was coming from a place in my heart about what we love the most about the game. I guess I would love people to know that you don’t have to be a Chiefs fan to enjoy this movie,” Wolfe says. “The Chiefs are in the movie, and it is about them, but it’s about more than that. It’s about things that are bigger than a team. It’s about your team.”
“Holiday Touchdown” first introduces Alana (Hunter King) and her family of Chiefs super fans who run a merch store. In comes Derrick (Tyler Hynes), who’s in charge of fan engagement for the Chiefs and oversees the annual fan of the year contest (which is real, by the way). Alana’s family is, of course, in the running.
Though Wolfe says one doesn’t have to love the Chiefs to appreciate the movie, its cameos will elate those who do: NFL mom Donna Kelce, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and players Mecole Hardman, Clyde Edwards-Helaire and George Karlaftis all appear.
The film even took inspiration from a real job in the Chiefs org. Jayne Martin has been the vice president of fan experience for 23 seasons. She says she is “bridging the gap between the team and our fans.”
In March, Wolfe spoke with Martin to go over the premise of the storyline. They touched on Martin’s job responsibilities and walked through potential scenarios that the film’s leading man might encounter.
“It was very important for (Wolfe) to ensure that the narrative was realistic,” Martin says.
Wolfe also brought aspects of her own football fandom to the plot. Alana’s last name, Higman, came from her friend’s maiden name, in honor of her family of Chiefs fans. Derrick’s last name meanwhile is Young — a nod to the Chiefs’ Super Bowl competitors.
“That’s for Steve Young from the 49ers,” Wolfe says. “I had to put something in there.”
Then there’s the Higmans’ lucky Chiefs hat, which drives a subplot. Alana’s family has a superstition: The Chiefs only go to the Super Bowl when that old beanie is worn by a family member on Christmas. Derrick doesn’t believe it though — so when the hat goes missing, things go awry.
Originally, Wolfe’s draft referenced a vintage Chiefs baseball hat. After they sent a couple pages of the script to the Chiefs, DiPippo recalls one of the team’s executives saying, “I’m reading this, and I’m just thinking of my grandpa. My grandfather had a vintage Chiefs winter hat, and he would wear it all the time while he was shoveling snow, and that’s my memory of him.”
“I’m reading it, I’m in my kitchen crying, and I text one of our other execs, and I said, ‘It’s a winter hat now, it’s a winter hat now!’” DiPippo says.
The Taylor Swift of it all
It’s undeniable that NFL experienced in 2023 season what has been dubbed the “Taylor Swift effect,” or the increase in exposure and female audience that follows the famous singer.
“The magic, the romance of the Taylor Swift and Kelce union really got people in that romance mood — and romance plus football, right?” Wolfe says.
Exactly. For Hallmark, project ideas really started flowing in December 2023, after a pair of commercials leaned into just that.
The first was a Hallmark ad, which aired Christmas Day on ESPN and stars Wolfe herself. In it, she sits at her computer as if typing a screenplay and lists the many ways the 2023 NFL season played out like a Hallmark movie, from “incredible stories” to “unexpected romance.”
Then in January, the Chiefs released a postseason commercial titled “Falling for Football,” which is framed as a spoof trailer for a Hallmark-esque film about a diehard NFL fan who works at a Chiefs gift shop. (Sound familiar?) Hynes plays that fan, and Donna Kelce notably makes a cameo.
DiPippo says the ESPN ad was a “great catalyst” to “Holiday Touchdown.” Then “Falling for Football,” which she calls a “little bit of a love letter to Hallmark,” helped inspire the premise of the movie.
Hynes says that when the Chiefs approached him for the “Falling for Football” commercial, it felt a little more “tongue in cheek.” But starring in “Holiday Touchdown” required him to treat the type of film spoofed in the commercial with integrity.
“This is a legitimate Hallmark movie that is filled with all the heart, sincerity, warmth and joy that these movies always have,” says Hynes, who has been in more than 15 Hallmark films, including six in the 2024 season.
Martin says Chiefs fan demographics have changed since Swift first appeared at Arrowhead Stadium and is now about 57% female. “Holiday Touchdown” is an example of an attempt to reach and engage that new audience with the Chiefs and the NFL as a whole, Martin says.
“I honestly feel like everything about this movie was meant to happen when it happened.”
Screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe
Though DiPippo believes Hallmark’s partnership with the Chiefs could have happened without Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce — “It’s 100% a pure Hallmark movie at heart,” she says — Wolfe believes a little of fate was still at play.
“I honestly feel like everything about this movie was meant to happen when it happened. It was meant to be,” Wolfe says. “They got the right people and the right time and Travis and Taylor, and everything happened the way it was meant to happen for this movie.”
Christmas in July
While “Holiday Touchdown” strays from the Travis Kelce-Swift relationship, being part of the film is surreal for star Hunter King, who identifies as a Swiftie and has her own “invisible string” connection to it all.
Kelce and Swift’s storybook romance notably started after he attended an “Eras Tour” concert in Kansas City. On July 7, King attended a Kansas City show with her sister, actor Joey King, who appeared in Swift’s “Mean” music video in 2011, then in “I Can See You” almost 13 years later. At that July 7 concert, Joey King joined Swift onstage.
“The day that we started filming I think was almost exactly a year later,” Hunter King says. “So I was like, ‘Wait a second. It really is a full circle moment for me.’”
The production kicked off shrouded in secrecy. Casting was “incredibly difficult,” DiPippo says, because they couldn’t share many details about the project, and “everything had NDAs.”
“This is the most secretive we’ve ever had to be on any project,” DiPippo says.
So when production started up around Kansas City in July, it drew a crowd. In addition to Arrowhead Stadium, “Holiday Touchdown” was filmed in the suburb of Independence, Missouri. The local pizzeria Square Pizza was transformed into a fictional barbecue restaurant called Norma & Nic’s, managed by Donna Kelce’s character. Inside, garlands with red ornaments bordered the ordering counter. Chiefs memorabilia hung on the walls, and wreaths decorated every door.
The entire production involved about two dozen Christmas trees used in rotation — including 18 used in one day — as well as more than 400 yards of lights of “every color ornament bulb you can imagine,” according to Daniel King, “Holiday Touchdown’s” production designer.
Most behind the scenes were met with challenges, like set decorator Christi Whiteley, who was in charge of decorating and re-decorating up to 20 trees over the course of a few days, and property master Hunter Nelson, who made sure edible props like holiday meals and gingerbread houses were preserved at certain temperatures.
And speaking of temperatures — the July heat was a hurdle for everyone.
At Arrowhead, about 1,000 extras filmed inside the stadium, wearing parkas, scarves and other winter gear as the temperature reached 99 degrees, though felt more like 102, according to the Weather app.
Hunter King filmed the Arrowhead Stadium scenes with an ice pack in her pants, a neck fan and an undershirt fan. On a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Hunter King says filming in the sun felt like a 9.
“It’s mostly the sweaters and then the coat over it, and in this heat and in the humidity, that’s what really, really cranks it up a notch,” she says.
The heat didn’t deter fans, though. At one point, while filming in Independence, there were about 70 people watching and standing in the sun, DiPippo recalls.
“They were coming in Chiefs gear. There were kids, there were grandparents. It was just so cute to see how excited they were just because we’re filming in their town,” she says.
TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager, who makes a cameo as a sports journalist, wore a heavy wool coat paired with a sweater-like tank top and white trousers. While rehearsing her scene on the field of Arrowhead, crew members held up umbrellas for the actors. One of the director’s last calls before “action” was the cue to put on jackets. The first thing each actor did after hearing “cut” was rip those coats off.
Chiefs players Mecole Hardman, Clyde Edwards-Helaire and George Karlaftis appear in the film during a game scene, so they got to dress in their Chiefs uniforms.
And luckily for Andy Reid, the head coach’s cameo only took about 15 minutes to film.
Before he left Arrowhead after delivering his lines, Reid told Jenna that he never would have imagined his stadium as the setting for not one, but now two love stories.
He adds, “Where we’re at in today’s world, this is a healthy thing.”
This post was originally published on here
