Creating Christmas with the Kranks

Christmas with the Kranks was based on based a novel called Skipping Christmas but the

title was changed because another holiday film, Surviving Christmas, was released the

same year. To capture the all-American suburb, the crew built an entire street from

scratch on a backlot in California—real houses, working lights, and snowy lawns,

creating one of the most elaborate holiday sets ever built. Between the rushed

production schedule, unpredictable weather, and mountains of fake snow, the making of Kranks

was as chaotic as the movie’s holiday spirit itself. When production began in 2003,

they knew they needed…