How Ryan Powers Created a Dark and Unconventional Christmas Story

The unconventional Christmas series Toymakers on Reveel tells a darkly comedic story about a toymaker named Timmy and his friends struggling after one of his toys accidentally kills a child on Christmas morning. 

Starring Ryan Powers as Timmy, the series provides a unique take on the holiday season not typically seen in family-friendly Christmas movies that tend to focus on joy, togetherness, and life lessons. We sat down with actor and creator Ryan Powers as he shares behind-the-scenes insights into his creative journey developing this darkly comedic holiday series.

1. Can you tell us what the series is about in your own words?

Ryan: Toymakers takes place at the North Pole.It’s a series about a superstar celebrity award-winning Olympian of a toy maker and his best friends.

On Christmas morning, they’re all chilling watching kids open their presents around the world. Because in my North Pole there’s a magic TV that allows them to do that, which is awesome. And sadly one of the star toymaker’s toys malfunctions and kills a child.

2. Does the core idea come from your mild obsession with the holiday known as Christmas?

Ryan: Thank you for saying mild. I appreciate that. The thing in this industry from my experience, with Christmas there seems to be sort of either the super family friendly hallmark lifetime style or the total other end, whether it’s a hard-R like Bad Santa or just a horror like Krampus or Black Christmas.

And so I thought it would be fun to go a bit in between for people who do love the whole festive theme and nature of Christmas but still with some devastation involved.

3. What’s the biggest challenge from going from one short film to making it into a series of 6 episodes?

Ryan: I’ve produced, written and then acted in four total projects including short films and they’ve all been so different. I wrote the short film Ticket Like a Man and was so precious about every decision for like a year. I also crowdfunded on top of my own money. Making Toymakers was a totally different experience. 

I actually wrote it as a short film and decided to change it with the way that content has changed rapidly. Instead of making Toymakers a 15-minute short film, we made a six episode series that were each two to three minutes long, so I’m not bothering anyone for too long. 

If I expect someone to watch the whole first season, I’m asking for 15 minutes of their time, which these days is a lot. I teamed up with Natalie Britton who has an amazing production company called Queen’s Gambit and she’s 99.9% of why it all came together.

4. How Did You Find The Location For Toymakers: The Series?

Ryan: My intention was to write the script so that it was possible to film it without needing a huge set. I wanted it to be three casual toymaker friends chilling in their North Pole apartment.

We don’t really see the North Pole except maybe an exterior that I would purchase a shot of snowy land. But then I decided to take a peek at Almost Christmas Shop and it was a Christmas wonderland.

It’s a huge warehouse of 100 Christmas trees and any decoration you could imagine. When I walked in, I knew I wanted to film here. It’s not cheap though. So either we filmed everything there or everything just in a chill apartment and make it easier. We decided to split it.

We would have one full day shooting there, one full day shooting in an apartment and just change the locations of scenes and go back and forth the whole time.

5. How did you approach the casting process for Toymakers?

Ryan: It was really fun putting the cast together. My husband was a casting director and we sort of put it together. I know a month sounds like a long time but we were moving so fast. To get this all done and edited and everything, it was moving so fast. So I actually just looked through a bunch of actor’s previous work like they’re reels.

We reached out to Chelsea Fry and luckily she got back to us really quick. She was into the idea and down to come do it and brought so much to the character. For Philip Jordan who plays Sean, I have known him for years actually and we offered the role to him and he was available.

For the news reporter, Jeanette King, she’s our one source of news that we get at the North Pole. Her name is Lauren Bear. She’s a close friend of mine and we’ve worked together on 90 percent of the projects we’ve done. We started this together before we had reached out to Natalie and she was just hilarious as the mean reporter. Yeah the cast was so much fun to work with.

If you want to learn more bout the creation of Toymakers, watch our full interview with Ryan Powers on Reveel’d.

Toymakers: The Series is an original, six-part short film series that will leave you laughing in the Christmas spirit. With each episode being under three minutes long, the combined runtime of all installments totals to around fifteen minutes, which is great on a busy holiday schedule.

Watch Toymakers: The Series on Reveel