Food Network Wraps Production on First-Ever Scripted Movie “Candy Coated Christmas”

Candy Coated Christmas has wrapped production. The film is a discovery+ entry into original scripted content and built on Food Network’s exponential popularity during the holiday season. It stars Molly McCook (Last Man Standing), Aaron O’Connell (The Haves and The Have-Nots), Jae Suh Park (The Big Short), John McCook (The Bold and the Beautiful), with the network’s own Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) making her feature debut.

The fictional story takes place during the holidays, set in the picturesque Peppermint Hollow, the Peppermint Capitol of the world.

Candy Coated Christmas will deliver on the food-centric content that Food Network fans love and it will bring in audiences that enjoy the feel-good stories associated with the holiday season. Directed by Ellie Kanner (Love and Sunshine) and written by Alex Yonks, Kanner, and Joey Plager, Candy Coated Christmas is produced by MarVista Entertainment in association with Go Films. Executive producers are Ellie Kanner, Joey Plager and Larry Grimaldi, Hannah Pillemer, and Fernando Szew for MarVista Entertainment.

Drummond, known for her long-running Food Network series The Pioneer Woman and her role as co-host of Christmas Cookie Challenge, makes her feature debut, bringing her down-to-earth appeal and real-life experiences as a proprietor to her role as the owner of a bakery who warmly befriends a newcomer to town.

“Candy Coated Christmas was so much fun to be part of; it had all the magical elements that make holiday movies so special,” said Drummond. “Any initial nerves I felt about joining this project completely melted away when I stepped into the sweet, charming world of Peppermint Hollow!”

Adds Larry Grimaldi, SVP Creative Affairs, MarVista Entertainment, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Food Network and discovery+ on their first scripted holiday movie. Combining MarVista’s long-standing expertise in telling quality, feel-good holiday stories with Food Network’s promise of providing entertaining lifestyle content is a perfect recipe to bring joy to the world.”

About Candy Coated Christmas

Molly Gallant (Molly McCook), a Los Angeles-based marketing executive on top of the world, is planning a new business venture with her best friend and heading to the airport for her annual holiday father-daughter trip to Hawaii when she learns that the seed money she was counting on for her business has disappeared. Molly’s father (John McCook) suggests she visit the small town where her late mother grew up, as an old family home may be the key to the start-up money she needs. Packed for the beach, Molly arrives in snowy Peppermint Hollow, where the first person she meets is the owner of Bee’s Bakery, Bee (Ree Drummond), giving her a warm introduction to the friendly denizens that reside in the Peppermint Capitol of the world. The Winters family, Noah (Aaron O’Connell), Kim (Lee Garlington), and Dakota (Landry Townsend), currently renting the house Molly’s mother grew up in, invite her to stay with them and offer her a lost connection to her own childhood memories and the possibility for a newly ‘minted’ business begins to take shape.