HOWELL — Locals will recognize some landmarks in a new romantic, musical Christmas movie.
Co-Producer Sarah Catherine Moore, a Howell resident, performed a classic Christmas song for the movie and recently won a Telly Award for it.
Portions of "Christmas on the North Pole Express" were filmed in Howell, Holly, Durand, and at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso. The film will premiere at 5 p.m. Sunday, July 14, at Emagine Hartland, 10495 Hartland Square Drive.
Producers were looking for towns that would match the feel of the movie.
"We had a fictional city that was an amalgam of three different places," Co-Producer Sam Logan Khaleghi, of Rochester Hills-based SLK Media Group, said. "We shot in Holly, Durand and Howell because, to us ... those three places carried the same sense of classic Americana."
"We utilized the city a lot because it's so beautiful," Executive Producer Calvin Kassab, of Kassab Pictures, said of Howell. "We utilized Main Street, alleyways, because the aesthetic is there for this type of movie."
Shots include the historic courthouse and the beachfronts of Thompson Lake, Kassab said.
Some of the lead actors' costumes came from downtown outfitter Howell Western Wear, and the production used some locals as extras.
Scenes from another of their movies, "Cupid's Christmas (2022)," which was licensed to Hallmark, were also shot in Howell, Khaleghi said.
The train institute in Owosso is home to the Pere Marquette 1225, a famous train used as "The Polar Express." The steam locomotive is making another film appearance as a central character in "Christmas on the North Pole Express."
"A lot of people, when they come to Michigan, especially from the west coast, tell us how picturesque and cinematic our cities are. They say, your guys' stuff looks right out of the movies," Kassab said. "We're lucky enough to have these towns that still maintain the aesthetics from the late 1880s."
"Christmas on the North Pole Express" is a "love story, loosely based off of 'A Christmas Carol,'" Khaleghi said.
"A young, up-and-coming singer, who is very affluent in pop culture, she's struggling to write her new hit," he said. "She has to get to her sister's wedding and she's running late because she spent extra time in the recording studio, and in the process of getting there, she jumps on the 1225."
Moore said the main character meets someone dressed as Santa on the train inspired by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future from the Charles Dickens story.
"She reunites with an old flame on the train," Moore said. "Her romance gets a second chance."
Khaleghi said they decided to premiere the film in July and shop it around to potential distributors before the holidays.
Moore, who has lived in Howell for more than a decade, is "fairly new to the movie scene," she said. "I've done a lot of theater. I have a degree in musical theater and opera performance from Oklahoma City University. That's always been my passion, is singing."
Her co-producers asked her to contribute music.
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"I decided to do 'O Holy Night,'" Moore said. Different artists "have interpreted it differently, so I just threw my own interpretation on it, a little more opera, more classical, I would say."
She said her rendition of "O Holy Night," which is featured at the end of the movie, won her a bronze Telly Award.
— Contact reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com.
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