December 29, 2022
Christmas movies are typically family-friendly, focusing on things like the joy of the season, spending time with loved ones, and learning important life lessons. While there are some classic Christmas films that have been around for years, there are also plenty of new holiday movies that challenge the traditional Christmas narrative with something a lot more unconventional. Toymakers is a series of short films on Reveel that tell a unique Christmas story.
Dark humor drives the story as it centers around toymaker Timmy and his friends who navigate tough times after one of Timmy’s toys accidentally kills someone on Christmas morning. Ryan Powers wrote and starred as Timmy in the series. In his exclusive interview with Reveel’d, Ryan recounts his journey in creating the captivating series.
Ryan Powers is a writer, actor, producer, and performer who has made many small appearances in television and film. He had a minor role in Agents of Shield, The Mandalorian, and most recently She-Hulk. He is best known as a writer for short films like Toymakers and Ticket Like a Man.
Ryan has always been obsessed with Christmas but wanted to create a different type of Christmas film. Instead of crafting a Christmas film that was overly heartwarming or far too brooding, Ryan sought out something in the middle. Thus, his decision to create a dark comedy. He wanted to poke fun at online vitriol and satirize our current climate of the internet which led to his idea for Toymakers.
Toymakers only has a few locations in the series but each one was integral to capturing the spirit of the holiday convincingly. The main location they needed was for the scenes at the north pole toy workshop. The crew filmed the scenes in a North Hollywood prop shop called Almost Christmas Prop Shoppe. At first, Ryan entered the prop shop to purchase props for his production but he was so taken aback by the Christmas decor that he decided it would be the perfect setting for filming instead.
Toymakers: The Series is an original, six-part short film series that will leave you laughing in the Christmas spirit. With each episode being under three minutes long, the combined runtime of all installments totals to around fifteen minutes, which is great on a busy holiday schedule. You can watch the entire series for free on Reveel.
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