Tom Rogers and Rachel Ruderman discuss story development, animation design, and music production on their all-new 3DCG holiday special that finds Mickey making a magical wish that every day could be Christmas, but having second thoughts when that wish comes true; now airing on Disney Channel and Disney Jr. and streaming on Disney+.
Debuting this past Sunday, December 1, the all-new 3DCG animated special, “Mickey and the Very Many Christmases,” is part of Disney Branded Television’s family programming slate that includes “Fa-la-la-lidays” and “Magical Holidays,” blocks which air on Disney Channel and Disney Jr., and stream on Disney+, running through January 18, 2025.
In the special, Mickey makes a magical wish that every day could be Christmas, but winds up having second thoughts when his wish actually comes true. It was written and executive produced by Tom Rogers (Minnie’s Bow-Toons, Elena of Avalor, Sofia the First), and written and co-executive produced by Rachel Ruderman (Minnie’s Bow-Toons, Elena of Avalor, Sofia the First).
For Rogers and Ruderman, the project began in Spring 2023, starting with a script by Kim Duran. “She had this great idea for Mickey having this wish that every day could be Christmas, and then discovering that wish came with consequences,” says Rogers. “So, Rachel and I took it on, rewrote the script, restructuring things a bit. That took us through the end of summer 2023. Then we launched into production really quickly, which lasted a little over a year. We just delivered in September of 2024, so 13 months from start to finish.” Noting that Christmas doesn’t move on the calendar, he explains, “We had a hard deadline. But we had a fantastic executive team and storyboard team, and our editor was amazing. Everybody was really pulling hard on the oars to make this thing quickly, but also to make it the most fun and most entertaining it could be.”
One consistent throughout the project was Duran’s core idea of Mickey wanting to experience Christmas over and over again. According to Ruderman, “That stayed in the story throughout. It really resonated with Tom and me. We saw Mickey almost like how a young kid sees the holidays. They love Christmas so much, and it's totally understandable they want to experience Christmas again and again. But we, as adults, have already come to the understanding that Mickey comes to by the end of the movie: Christmas works best when it comes just once a year. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.”
“The thing we really latched onto was the idea of memories, something we were able to bring to the story,” Rogers adds. “What makes a special day special are the memories that we make with our family and friends on that day. What Mickey had unwittingly done was he'd focused on the fun stuff but robbed himself of the meaningful stuff.” In the special, Mickey gets presents and cocoa, and goes sledding, but loses the ability to make new memories with the people that he loves. “That's really the essence of the joy of the holidays,” Rogers continues. “So, it's a journey for Mickey of recognizing that the things that are fun on the surface are only fun on the surface, and the things that really matter can't be reproduced unless you spend that important time.”
Unlike the exaggerated and wildly cartoony designs of Paul Rudish’s brilliant, back-to-back 2D Mickey Mouse shorts series, the special’s more traditional character and animation designs take their cues from Minnie’s Bow-Toons, a series of Minnie Mouse shorts Rogers and Ruderman produced together. Like the Mickey special, they both served as writers; Rogers served as executive producer, Ruderman as co-executive producer. So, coming into this holiday special, the pair had already spent considerable time in the Mickey, Minnie and friends’ universe.
“Rachel and I have both worked with these characters for a long time,” Rogers shares. “We are both executive producers and showrunners on Minnie's Bow-Toons. We’ve been working with Minnie, Daisy, and the rest of the Fab five - Goofy, Donald and Pluto - who appear from time to time in these stories, plus Clarabelle, and other characters. So, we're familiar with their personalities and with the way we want to portray them.”
He continues, “One of the most important things about Mickey is that he's always positive. He comes at everything from a positive point of view, even when he's making wrong choices. A thing we like to keep true about Mickey is he's never mean. He's never cruel to his friends. He doesn't yell... maybe once in a while. The main thing is we want to keep the bond of that friendship alive and true.”
They did create a new character, Twinkles, for the special, making sure that she looked like a part of the world. “She's like a winter fox,” Ruderman says. “We worked hard with our amazing designers to make sure she fit in but was still special and unique and had that Disney magic.”
Rogers shares that there is a specific studio guide on how to animate Donald Duck that they had to follow on the project. “Talk about the legacy of the characters,” he laughs. “There's a ‘How to Speak and Write for Donald’ guide that comes from back in the '40s I think, and it's been updated over time. Tony Anselmo, who plays Donald now, has given us some guidance on that. But there are certain phrases and syllables that are hard for him to say and certain phonemes that are easy to say. So, we have a pretty specific guide about what to avoid and what to lean in on… certain phrases that come through really clearly, particularly when he is repeating somebody else. So, when writing for Donald, you have to be conscious of those... I wouldn't even call him limitations, just parameters to work with.”
“Seeing that old, mimeographed document connects us right back to Walt and the guys who created these characters,” he adds. “You're going through the same type of ideation process and thinking of design and story that everybody before you, in the decades that they've been doing it, all looked at in the exact same way.”
Overall, the 3DCG designs for the characters have been established at the studio, evolving over time with each iteration as the animation technology evolves, to maintain consistency across all the Mickey movies and shows.
As for the special’s lively songs, Rogers notes that on all the shows he’s worked on, the writers have written all song lyrics. “We want the songs and lyrics to drive the story,” he says. “We don't want it to just be a pause and then a musical moment.”
Ruderman wrote the show’s first song, “Christmas Memories.” She explains, “We write them before we get to the animation stage, so the animators have that to work with. Tom wrote the song that we hear when they make the wish, ‘Welcome to Our Village.’ Then our amazing composer, Keith Harrison Dworkin, made incredible tunes for them. He wrote ‘Christmas All Over Again,’ the really fun earworm that's in this special. So, on all those, we worked out the lyrics as part of the script process. Being able to write the lyrics from a story standpoint really helps us create a consistent theme going through the whole movie.”
Asked about the biggest challenges they faced on the show, Ruderman pauses before noting, “This was a pretty dreamy production. We had such a great crew. I love the holidays, and since I usually work on television shows, I only get to do an episode or a short or just a song about the holidays. So, to get to do a whole half-hour about the holidays was really fun. To get to spread that out over a year plus of production was a complete delight for me. So, it's hard to give a great answer. Maybe Tom has a better answer about the challenges.”
“Challenges… Gosh, it's all the ordinary challenges of you just want it to always be as funny as possible, and as entertaining as possible, and as sweet as possible,” Rogers chimes in. “I guess our challenges mostly are ones that would be boring to hear about, just related to schedule and getting stuff done on time. But the two of us have a good perspective on these issues, as does everyone on our crew. It’s such a gift to be able to work on a show like this that we don't tend to get too, 'woe is me' about occasional long hours or tight deadlines. It's just, ‘What an opportunity!’”
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
