: In a heated bidding battle for a dish that would seem best served cold, Apple Studios prevailed in a 3-streamer auction and will pay $1.6 million against around $3 million for Foster the Snowman. It’s an exceptionally large deal for a holiday pitch by Jono Matt & Peter Huyck for a high concept family film that bidders hope has the makings of a holiday perennial movie in the vein of Elf, Home Alone and It’s A Wonderful Life.

Apple won the deal over rival streamers Netflix and Amazon MGM, after the writers pitched to 12 places over four days, with different elements attached around town. I’ve heard that at least one of the rival streamers might have bid higher on the upfront end, but Apple had an advantage: Huyck is EP of the streamer’s hot Hollywood insider sitcom The Studio, and also producer Kevin Walsh’s The Walsh Company has its overall deal with Apple Studios. Walsh will produce with Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan, and Huyck, Matt and Liz Lippman are the executive producers.

The pitch is a high concept Christmas movie with a hero like Paddington, humor like Elf, and heart like It’s A Wonderful Life, per the scribes. A childless couple take an accelerated journey through every parenting milestone when they’re forced to adopt an adorable snowman, whose whole magical life will play out in just 72 hours.

The writers believe that bringing out a Christmas movie might have seemed poor timing, but it certainly helped that The Studio has become the most inside Hollywood must watch since Entourage.

“Pitching 12 studio execs a project shortly after launching a TV show where the heroes are studio executives, was probably solid timing,” Huyck said, though he admitted that the depiction of the dysfunctional characters in the show doesn’t exactly make someone want to be a studio executive. “We don’t usually get to see the challenges of their jobs humanized all too often, and to spend years making a show and then go down the feature side pitching a film we hope will stand the test of time, that was a really fun jump off from The Studio. These executives are people who love movies. They light up, lean in and wanted to hear the story when we talked about what we want to accomplish here. It’s the thing we keep banging the drum on about the studios. We all want to keep movies along, and tell stories that make people want to come together and have shared experiences.”

It’s not the iconic wall-crashing Kool-Aid pitcher who figured in The Studio‘s first episode, but this one has the cutest little snowman, who quickly grows in size. Get merchandising and marketing on line one!

“The desire to make a holiday classic, I saw it in the eyes of the executives when Pete said, ‘your favorite movie might be Shawshank Redemption, but you don’t get in matching pajamas with your family every year to watch Shawshank. You watch Elf, Home Alone, these perennial movies you want to see every year with your family, for decades. That’s the unique movie experience these people wanted to capture. The matching pajamas experience.”

The scribes indicated the project will take a fast track, with an eye toward Christmas 2026. “The dream is this does land in theaters, and that it will be the holiday version of F1,” Huyck said, alluding to Apple’s Formula One Brad Pitt-starrer that Warner Bros is giving a wide theatrical release before it lands on Apple TV+. “We know Apple will support and give its best light, and theatrical is the brass ring for us.

“We went to 12 studios over 4 days, old school driving from lot to lot, different producers on different territories,” Huyck said. “Two of the 12 executives we pitched were nine months pregnant, and for a movie about a couple taking in an adorable snowman baby that grows up really fast, and that was almost unfair. They were so emotionally ready to hear that pitch. And at Apple, there was Matt Dentler, laughing and by the end, came the teary eyes. We go, we got Dentler! And the Apple room, you just felt that magical reaction. Having done The Studio for them this past year, when they have your back and we feel really lucky to land there with this project. I’ve never had an experience quite like this, in 30 years in the biz.”

Said Matt: “By the second day, offers were coming in, and people saw this could have a legacy to it. Everybody wanted to be in the Christmas movie business as fast as possible. Pete said, we’re pitching this in the bright daylight of April, so if you love it, it’s because you love it. It’s not because you heard Mariah Carey on the radio on the way to the office, or you’re drunk on egg nog.”

Huyck is repped by WME and Hansen Jacobson, and Matt is repped by Verve and Johnson Shapiro Slewett.