Cicero Bright is a brilliant, self-sabotaging painter and a hopeless father — a little boy in a grown man's body, freshly liberated from marriage and loving every minute of it. So when his ex-wife Jemima announces she's marrying a charming, fabulously rich aristocrat, Cicero pretends to be delighted. Then, on the wedding day, Jemima is abducted before his eyes — and Cicero discovers, to his own surprise, that he'd do anything to get her back.

The only person who still believes in him is his nine-year-old daughter Sammie — far too clever for her age, with one Christmas wish: her whole family, together on Christmas Eve, just like before. Cicero stumbles toward becoming the father he never was, even reuniting with his two hostile adolescent kids. The whole family sets out to unmask the master swindler behind the kidnapping — not realizing they've wandered into the path of some very dangerous, very loony mobsters.

A Bright Christmas is a heightened, larger-than-life Christmas comedy — action, romance, and wish-fulfillment — about a broken family that finds its way back to each other.

Status: Treatment. Evolved from an earlier project ‘ Een vroege Kerst voor de familie Hartman’ (treatment commissioned by Pellicola Film). Now a completed treatment under this title. Tonally lighter and more commercial than the other work.