EXCLUSIVE: Ana Gasteyer, who spent six years as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, knows a thing or two about Christmas. From Schweddy Balls to her Martha Stewart Christmas impressions on the NBC comedy series to her Christmas jazz album Sugar & Booze, Gasteyer has a love for the holidays.
She is now turning this passion into a holiday competition series with a search to discover the newest seasonal holiday hit.
The Most Wonderful Song of the Year is designed to find the next holiday classic that will rival Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You.
Gasteyer and her Most Wonderful Company have teamed up with SuperBloom House and Hollywood Game Night producer Mission Control Media to produce the interactive musical comedy.
The idea is to create a community to come together around their love of holiday music and have them decide the next classic. Emerging and established artists will go head-to-head, performing original holiday songs as audiences follow along, vote and build enthusiasm around the songs and the artists behind them.
However, instead of pitching the project to traditional broadcasters and streamers, the group are going social first. The series is being created as a vertical series and will likely appear across multiple social platforms, including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. They want to create a “highly clippable experience” with “big social energy” and “lots of holiday cheer”.
The project comes as Gasteyer is on a tear; Schmigadoon! just won the Tony Award for Best Musical, with Gasteyer nominated for her role and her comedy feature Never Change!, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, launches later this week on Hulu.
“Holiday music has this rare power — a great song doesn’t just get listened to, it gets passed down,” said Gasteyer. “We want to find that next song and put its fate exactly where it belongs: in the hands of the audience. Expect music, comedy, special guests, and plenty of surprises. I may even play a fiddle.”
“Every year, the same beloved songs top the charts because no new classic has come along to earn that place,” added Adam Milano, Head of Branded Entertainment at SuperBloom House. “You’d be hard pressed to find a bigger Mariah Carey fan than me but there is room for more great songs. We’re not just looking for a hit, we’re creating a new holiday tradition, one steeped in a future view of entertainment, music and comedy. It’s the smallest screens that give us the biggest social energy.”
