Chiefs fans offer hilarious, creative tips for Hallmark Christmas movie filming in KC

The Hallmark Channel announced this week that it’s making one of its popular holiday movies with a Kansas City Chiefs theme.

After Chiefs Kingdom stopped wondering what took KC-based Hallmark so long to come up with this homegrown idea, they began offering ideas on casting, a title and swiftly suggested soundtrack music.

“Please tell me it’s @mitchholthus narrator,” tweeted fan Taylor B. O’Neal, referencing the team’s longtime announcer.

Another fan offered these titles: “I’ll Be Mahomes for Christmas.” “A Kelce Swiftmas.” “Coach Santa (starring Andy Reid).”

“Is it about a successful football player looking for love, and a famous former country singer, and how they somehow get together and save Chief’s Christmas? Falling in love along the way?” one Chiefs fan tweeted.

No.

The movie has a title: “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” as announced by Hallmark, the NFL and Skydance Sports, who have teamed up for the pic.

Can we all just agree we know whose “love story” that references?

Taylor Swift fans know. So do fans of other NFL teams who are devising their own plots.

“Her private jet gonna get snowed in at the hangar.”

“My money is on her actually trying to fly commercial, but it getting grounded due to snow. Then Kelce’s character is gonna call her and say “go to Hangar 87, I’ve got a surprise for you.” Then it’s him and a private jet that isn’t grounded, getting them both to Christmas dinner in the nick of time.”

The movie has been cast, though extras are needed. It stars Tyler Hynes, one of the most popular actors on the Hallmark Channel and dubbed a Hallmark “holiday hunk” by Vulture pop culture website.

Hynes just happens to know his way around GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

In the movie Hynes plays Derrick, the director of fan engagement for the Chiefs. (In real life that job belongs to Jayne Martin, vice president of fan experience.)

The plot focuses on Alana Higman, played by rom-com and former “Young and the Restless” actress Hunter King, who “is sure that her family’s lifelong history as Kansas City Chiefs superfans makes them a frontrunner to win the team’s ‘Fan of the Year’ contest,” according to the synopsis.

Derrick must decide how Alana’s family compares to other finalists and, as happens in every Hallmark Channel movie, romantic sparks fly.

“Why not Travis and Taylor?” one fan fussed on The Kansas City Star’s Instagram.

The disappearance of a lucky vintage Chiefs hat belonging to Alana’s grandfather — played by environmentalist actor Ed Begley Jr. who was diagnosed in 2016 with Parkinson’s disease — adds drama that will no doubt be resolved by what Hallmark calls “a little Christmas magic.”

“We need Eric Stonestreet in this movie,” one fan tweeted, a sentiment amplified by others. The KCK native and former “Modern Family” star lives in the Kansas City area is an avid Chiefs fan.

How do they not get Stonestreet in this movie, another fan wondered. (Stonestreet doesn’t have a Hallmark movie listed among his IMDB acting credits, though he did once use the Hallmark Channel as a punchline in a tweet.)

“@JasonKelce better be coming in hot with that Hallmark ending,” tweeted a fan of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s exuberant brother and podast partner.

A few fans wondered whether notorious bank-robbing Chiefs superfan known as “Chiefsaholic” — real name Xavier Michael Babudar — would appear.

(That would be A&E, not the Hallmark Channel.)

“I heard they cast Josh Allen as Patrick Mahomes’ son. Is that true?” Chiefs Kingdom member Josh Chavis tweeted, referencing the Buffalo Bills quarterback who is 28, like Mahomes.

“I heard (they) cast Tom Brady as his daddy,” another fan snarked.

Chavis also offered Hallmark his own outline for a Chiefs Christmas movie with a royal twist titled “Touchdown for Love.”

His synopsis: “A Welsh rugby star joins the Kansas City Chiefs, and falls for a normal American girl next door. But surprise! He’s a European prince. Can their love survive royal duties and the dreaded paparazzi? Holiday magic and Christmas cheer may hold the answer.”

Someone else had AI create a story.

Production of the movie begins next month. It will be shot entirely in Kansas City, including at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, Hallmark said.

It will be a return to Kansas City for Hynes, who has his own Hallmarkie groupies.

He and Hallmark Channel regulars Paul Campbell and Andrew Walker starred in “Three Men and a Baby,” the channel’s most-watched film in 2022. They reprise their roles as the movie’s Brenner brothers in an upcoming sequel, “Three Wiser Men and a Boy,” which began filming in the spring in Vancouver, Canada.

In January Hynes starred as a passionate football fan in a Chiefs hype video released before the AFC Wild Card game and filmed in the Kansas City area. It was made to look like the trailer for a Hallmark Christmas movie, which didn’t exist at that point.

Hynes, a Toronto native, will have spent a lot of time in Kansas City by the end of the year.

After filming the Christmas movie he’ll be back during the holidays when he and more than 35 Hallmark Channel stars meet their fans at the Hallmark Christmas Experience, a new event coming to Crown Center.

It will run every weekend on the Crown Center Square from Nov. 29 through Dec. 23. Hynes is set to appear here Thanksgiving weekend. (For tickets, and information about free and ticketed events, go to experiencehallmarkchristmas.com.)

But no need to wait until November. Because in Hallmark land, Christmas begins at 7 p.m. Friday when the Hallmark Channel’s #ChristmasInJuly celebration begins with a marathon of fan-favorite holiday movies.