10 Movies That Were Almost WAY Darker
7. The Santa Clause
The Santa Clause is an unassailable holiday classic, no matter that it rocks the mildly disturbing premise of a father, Scott Calvin (Tim Allen), accidentally incapacitating and possibly killing Santa Claus (Steve Lucescu), forcing him to take up the mantle.
Though the recent Disney+ series cushioned the blow somewhat by suggesting that the prior Santa was an "ethereal being" and therefore couldn't die, in a 2018 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Tim Allen revealed that things went down a little differently in the script's first draft.
Originally, Scott thought Santa was a burglar and so immediately opened fire on him, mortally wounding Santa but giving him just enough time to hand Scott the fateful Santa Clause card.
Scott's son Charlie then admonished his dad for killing Santa, to which he grimly replied, "He shouldn't have been on the roof when he wasn't invited."
For a dark seasonal comedy that's a pretty delicious set up, but a Disney-produced family film? Not quite, with then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg pointing that out to Allen, resulting in the script undergoing a more family-friendly redraft.