Netflix: ‘A California Christmas’ Sequel Coming Soon

Ali Afshar’s A California Christmas is getting a holiday sequel, Variety reports. After the program’s surprising success, Afshar’s ESX Entertainment has begun fast-tracking pre-production on the follow-up film titled California Christmas: City Lights. The Netflix movie is scheduled to begin shooting in parts of northern California — including Petaluma, Sonoma County and surrounding areas — as early as 2021.

The original movie, which premiered on Dec. 14, opened at No. 1 in its first week and remains in Netflix’s top 10 currently, beating out Ryan Murphy’s star-studded holiday musical The Prom. A California Christmas follows a carefree charmer (Josh Swickard) who, in order to save his real estate heir lifestyle, poses as a ranch hand to get a hard-working farmer (Lauren Swickard) to sell her family’s land before Christmas. Afshar, David Del Rio, Natalia Mann, Katelyn Epperly, Gunnar Anderson, Julie Lancaster, and Amanda Detmer round out the cast.

Part of the film’s popularity could be owed to its two main stars who have some experience portraying the simple country lifestyle. Lauren and Josh Swickard, who are married in real life, met in 2017 while working on Afshar’s Roped. The movie follows a progressive town that erupts when a traveling rodeo lands within its city limits and the councilman’s daughter falls in love with the cowboy.

The husband and wife duo will be returning with Afshar as stars and fellow producers for the sequel along with director Shaun Piccinino. Producer Daniel Aspromonte will also come back for “California Christmas: City Lights.” Lauren Swickard will pen the new film.

The inspiration to write the original movie, Swickard says, came from the sheltering-in-place due to the coronavirus pandemic. The writer spoke with LRM online where she opened up about her experience creating a movie under the unforeseen circumstances.

“I started thinking what would people want to see after the pandemic because I did think it would be over by the holidays,” she said. “I thought a holiday movie would be perfect and I thought if we could get it produced during the pandemic, nobody would have Christmas content to sell to these streaming services.”

She continued on sharing how the team’s commitment to following the COVID-19 led them to finish the film without any coronavirus-related hitches. “SAG-Aftra, our union, they worked with us. We were one of the first productions to actually start filming in the pandemic and we were the first to wrap in the pandemic. So, we like to call our crew ‘Hollywood’s guinea pig.’ We didn’t have one positive case. Everyone was really respectful of the rules and it just worked out.”