During an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, actor Tim Allen has been reminiscing about the hit 1994 Christmas comedy The Santa Clause.
In the film, Allen’s Scott Calvin is forced to take on the role of Father Christmas after accidentally causing Santa to fall from the roof of his house, but as Allen has revealed, the original script was actually much darker and saw his character gunning down poor old St. Nick in cold blood.
“The original Santa Clause is a little darker, written by two comedians, and I actually shot and killed Santa in the original movie,” said Allen. “He fell off the roof because I thought he was a burglar. He gives me the card – the whole movie starts. The kid actually starts, ‘You just killed Santa.’ And I said, ‘He shouldn’t have been on the roof when he wasn’t invited.'”
Allen went on to reveal that Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of Walt Disney Pictures, nixed the idea and told him that they couldn’t start a Disney movie with their main character shooting Santa Claus. That’s an understandable position really, especially for a family movie like The Santa Clause, although by the time we got to The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause I’m sure even the younger members of the audience would have been happy to see Santa blown away.
