'Urkel Saves Santa: The Movie' Does A Digital Release For Christmas
Another HBO Max shed has been accounted for! Christmas miracle!
Some family matters leave you on short notice. Steve Urkel is back in some capacity, this time with his very own movie. Animated of course, it seems no one’s sat down and quite figured out how to translate the character to an adult appearance in the 25 years since his actor Jaleel White last played him in-person when Family Matters ended.
Urkel Saves Santa: The Movie stars White as Urkel without a single Winslow family member in sight. He’s definitely ready for Santa. The film’s official description reads “The holiday season is here, and brilliant but accident-prone super genius Steve Urkel has only one mission: to make the holidays the best they can be for everyone.” It continues “However, things are off to a not so merry start after he ruins a celebration at his local shopping mall and humiliates the department store Santa. Hoping to make things right, Steve invents a device that helps people spread holiday cheer but it only manages to make things worse. Using his big brain and even bigger heart, it’s up to Steve to help the city rediscover the holiday spirit.”
The film was originally known as Did I Do That to the Holidays? A Steve Urkel Story when it was announced for HBO Max and Cartoon Network’s ACME Night in September 2021, along with a Batman Christmas movie, Merry Little Batman and The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. However it and three other ACME Night intendees, Batman: Caped Crusader, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical and The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie, were removed from both slates by the new Warner Bros. Discovery regime in August 2022. So far, Merry Little Batman and Batman: Caped Crusader have been rescued by Prime Video, with the former premiering December 8. The Day The Earth Blew Up is in pursuit of a theatrical release with GFM Entertainment. So what’s the deal here? Well, Urkel Saves Santa is still being released by Warner Bros. Entertainment, but still doesn’t have any revealed broadcast or streaming home. Instead, it’s settled for a digital release on your typical foray of digital markets that will make it the first of this class to be released, on Tuesday, November 21, which comes even before Thanksgiving.
The voice cast also includes Nailed It! and Wipeout host Nicole Byer, former The Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. and Kym Whitley, recently seen in You People on Netflix. It is co-directed by Bryan Newton, whose work includes Rick and Morty and Teen Titans Go!, who also serves as supervising producer, Richard Pose, who also comes from Rick and Morty, as well as Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Animaniacs story artist Jojo Ramos Patrick and written by Wyatt Cenac, who also serves as executive producer; from his overall cross studio deal with Warner Bros Animation and Cartoon Network Studios in 2021. White himself serves as producer. Robert L. Boyett (as in Miller-Boyett Productions, who produced Family Matters) and studio president Sam Register serve as executive producers. White had also reprised as Urkel in 2019, guest starring in an episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?. Watch the Urkel Saves Santa trailer below.
Sources: TVLine, Animation Magazine