Thirty years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger spent Jingle All the Way punching his way through a shopping mall in pursuit of a Turbo-Man action figure. Now, in the grand tradition of Hollywood promotions, he has been made head of the entire department. In The Man with the Bag, Amazon MGM Studios’ new holiday heist comedy, Arnie plays Santa Claus himself, and the first teaser trailer has just landed, a mere two months ahead of its Prime Video debut on 2nd December 2026. He said he’d be back. Admittedly, Santa comes back every year anyway, but it’s the thought that counts.
The set-up is the sort of premise that could only have been pitched in a room where somebody had already eaten most of the mince pies. Santa’s iconic red bag, the magical one that presumably holds more than a Scandinavian furniture warehouse, is stolen by a rogue elf with a grudge, played by Awkwafina. With Christmas Eve bearing down on him, Father Christmas does what any sensible CEO does when the stock goes missing: he opens the Naughty List and goes shopping for professional criminals. He lands on Vance, a thief played by Reacher’s Alan Ritchson, who assembles a crew of criminally skilled misfits, with a little help from elves and reindeer, to pull off what the marketing calls “the most unexpected heist of their lives.” Think Ocean’s Eleven, only with more antlers and a much stricter bedtime.
There is something quietly brilliant about the Naughty List finally being put to productive use. For centuries, Santa has been maintaining the most comprehensive surveillance database in human history, monitoring every child on the planet for behavioural infractions, and the best anyone ever did with it was hand out lumps of coal. Here, at last, somebody has realised it doubles as the world’s finest criminal recruitment agency. The North Pole’s data protection officer is presumably still on gardening leave.
Then there’s the scale of the thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Santa is one thing, but casting Alan Ritchson opposite him produces the rare cinematic event in which the Governator is not the largest man in the scene. Ritchson, who also produces, has spent several seasons of Reacher walking through doors that were not technically open, so one assumes chimneys will pose no great obstacle. Put the pair of them in the same sleigh and the reindeer are going to want danger money.
The supporting cast is stacked like a Boxing Day buffet: Berkeley James, Michael Cyril Creighton, Liza Koshy, Kyle Mooney and Jane Krakowski, with Ken Jeong and Awkwafina rounding things off. Awkwafina’s disgruntled elf is the bit that intrigues us most. The synopsis mentions a grudge, and frankly any worker who has spent several hundred years on an unpaid production line inside the Arctic Circle has earned one. Somewhere in this story, we suspect, lurks the North Pole’s first industrial dispute, with the bag held as leverage until management agrees to discuss pensions.
Behind the camera is Adam Shankman, director of Hairspray and Bringing Down the House, working from a script by Allan Rice. The score comes from John Debney, who has previous in this area, having scored Elf, which rather suggests the film knows exactly which sleigh bells it intends to ring. Shooting took place on the streets of New York, and Schwarzenegger said on Instagram at the time that Shankman is “one of the funniest directors I’ve worked with”, which is high praise from a man who has worked with Ivan Reitman and a pregnant prosthetic belly.
The film is rated PG, and Amazon’s own description promises “holiday magic, big laughs, and plenty of heart,” plus a message about second chances, unlikely friendships and the discovery that even Santa sometimes needs help delivering Christmas. It has had a slightly bumpy road to the chimney, too. Many expected it for the 2025 festive season before it quietly slipped off the release schedules, re-emerging with its December 2026 date in May. Still, a Christmas film arriving a year late is merely a Christmas film that has been in the cupboard for a while, like the Quality Street tin nobody finished.
Is it going to be subtle? Almost certainly not. Judging by that synopsis, The Man with the Bag is carrying enough cheese to fill the deli counter at Waitrose for Crimble, with a little extra Stilton left over for the reindeer. But festive fantasy has never been about subtlety. It is about a magic sack that is bigger on the inside, a sleigh that breaks several laws of physics before midnight, and a large Austrian gentleman in a red suit saying things in an accent that makes “Ho, ho, ho” sound like a threat assessment.
If the film delivers on that, it could well join Jingle All the Way on the list of Schwarzenegger Christmas outings people pretend to watch ironically every December. If not, there is always the Naughty List. We hear it is hiring.
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