In Mel Gibson's new action comedy Fatman, the A-lister plays Chris Cringle in a very different holiday flick.
- The story revolves around Chris Cringle, who is forced into a partnership with the U.S. military and gets locked into a deadly battle against a highly skilled assassin, hired by a precocious 12-year-old after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking.
- Mel believes one of the central messages in the film is how many young kids have lost their innocents, distracted with their electronics. "That’s absolutely the message i think at the heart of the film and it's poor old Santa opining the loss of that of that era when things were less cynical and more innocent. And he thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket and he’s complaining about that and is irritable.
- English actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste, known for her role in the 1996 film Secrets & Lies, for which she earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination, co-stars in Fatman and believes technology has its benefits. "We’re all devised up and there are some positives to it, I mean we've been able to keep up and do things like this, because of technology and where it’s taken us but at the same time I think there is a need for us to remember community ... and people have tried our own ... but it's remembering to love, to be kind to one another and work together."
- Actor Danny McBride served as an executive producer on the film.
- And with movie theaters taking a huge hit during the pandemic Mel believes they will bounce back eventually. "I don’t think we’ll ever lose our desire for public dreaming, which is what cinema is really, it's public dreaming. And so there’s a magic to that, and a shared experience that I don’t think will ever go away. There will be a desire for it. Will there be a place to do it? Who knows, I hope so, I always loved the experience, but streaming seems to be taking over and we’re in a different world now."