Netflix obviously threw a ton of money at her to get her away from Hallmark, even if it may be non-exclusive. You can kind of tell she's been downshifting her schedule the past couple years at Hallmark anyway as they attempt to bring in younger, cheaper faces for their channel. She's nearing the age when it will get harder and harder to sell her as a romantic lead for their audience.

More interesting to see will be if she ever does anything for Hallmark's direct competitor, Great American Channel.

Unless Lacey has some type of exclusive contract that says she can only work on Hallmark movies I don't see this as a big deal. She still does voice work in cartoons as well.

I agree that this is really not that big of a deal, but I also understand why a lot of folks on-line paused at the news to consider Lacey's future at Hallmark. Her last three Hallmark films (the Haul Out The Holly films, and the Scottish Christmas film, which was a Party Of Five mini-reunion) did pretty darn well for Hallmark so folks clearly want to see much more of Chabert in Hallmark films but as Phantom already noted, you see Netflix throwing lots of money at her and bending to her time schedule (I imagine she is very busy throughout the year) and you start to think hmmm...is something up when it comes to her future at Hallmark.

I will double down that unless she privately shares the same views on marriage as Candace Cameron Bure (who is very much against marriage that is not only between a man and a woman) that she is unpoachable by GAC. Maybe if Candace had not gone so public with her views they had a chance, but I think there is now a snowballs chance in hell that we see her in a GAC film in the next 2-3 years.

I will say that this news just acts as a good reminder that another batch of Holiday films will be upon us soon enough (well, we are still many months away, but it is hard to believe that in around 4 months the Countdown to Christmas will right around the corner, so to speak), and boy do we need them as this years batch of films have been meh at best, with quite a few just being not good at all. Not even great background viewing films, just a film that you can skip with no regrets even if you try to catch all the films like I do.

Maybe blame it (the blah like films this year) on the strikes, but we have had better films at this point in the year from years past (the Wedding Veil films, and I remember looking forward to the latest Wedding March film). This years Austen experiment was a mixed bag, but surprisingly enough some of those films were better than the love in National Park films we have been getting lately from Hallmark.

Anyway, to repeat myself for the umpteenth time in this thread, I still try to watch them all and derive some enjoyment out of even the bad films, but yeah...a lot of duds this year. I seem to remember in years past there was more activity around commenting on Hallmark Originals throughout the year, but this year not so much. I think it is a combo of folks are busy watching lots of other stuff, and that many of the films are not really worth writing home about, lol.

ETA: The really frustrating thing about some of these films is that I love the cast, Tyler Hines and Katherine Barrell in a film, sign me up! However, the film they were in turned out to be not all that memorable and was one of the just okay at best films of the year.

I'm not wild about Lacey fooling around with Netflix. But yeah, it'd be much worse if it were GAC, which aggressively poaches away the Hallmark talent. Hallmark really leaned on Lacey after the departures of Lori Loughlin and Candace Cameron Bure.

I've still been recording the films but haven't watched any in the last couple months because I retired and no longer WFH in front of the TV lol. I'll have to figure out how to keep up with them.

I was watching heavily earlier this year but didn't get around to updating the thread. I thought Austen Month was a mixed bag. The convention one and the time-travel one were the best, while the Sense and Sensibility seemed kind of pointless since there are so many versions of that already.

I also dug into some old ones just to check them off. I finally watched all the Loves Comes... series, which were fine. Katherine Heigl obviously turned out to be the big name in the first two, and she was fine, but I thought some of the later storylines were more interesting, albeit in a soapy way. I also watched a bunch of CCB Aurora Teagarden mysteries, which were also fine, and I liked Lacey and Brennan Elliott in the All of My Heart series (I think I had only seen the first).

I also burned through a season and a half of The Way Home, which I liked, but I still haven't finished it because of my watching drought. And I thought the double-length Karen Kingsbury's The Bridge was quite good, with Katie Findlay, who was also good in the recent comedy Love Strikes Twice.

Not sure how well GAC is doing, they barely even run their own movies. The channel outside of the holiday season is an endless block of Perry Mason, Murder She Wrote and Columbo reruns these days.

GAC made a big deal about their Easter movie with Hallmark alum Laura Osnes, but I missed it and it didn't seem to be repeated. They always repeat everything a jillion times, but maybe this one was too seasonal. Or maybe they are reworking their strategy. They certainly seemed to spend a lot of money on talent, and their movies generally aren't that good, even by these standards.

New Hallmark sale on Fandango/Vudu around a travel theme. The good news is that it includes two of the final four Signed Sealed Delivered movies I want. These are never on sale--I only bought the first eight because they were in cheap four-packs, and regular price is $10-13, which I've balked at paying. Maybe the others will pop up in a sale too.

Well, speaking of SSD, I had no idea there was a new movie coming next week because I don’t follow industry news and gossip. I’m looking forward to it, and now I understand why they’ve been rerunning them lately.

Caught up on a couple from this spring, Blind Date Book Club with Erin Krakow and Branching Out with Sarah Drew. The first was a pretty standard book/writer story for the target audience, and the second involves IVF, which they probably didn’t expect to be a controversial topic now.

I have collected all of the Signed Sealed Delivered Movies on DVD but Hallmark hasn't released the movie "The Vows we have Made" individually on dvd. I guess I'll need to buy it digitally.

I know that these posts of mine will get old real quick as we get closer to the Countdown films, but now that it is August we are officially less than 3 months out from what I consider the real kick-off of Hallmarks Holiday films, their Fall Festival/Harvest block of films that starts up right around or a weekend before Halloween Day (a Thursday this year, so Fall Harvest films will probably kick-in the weekend leading into Halloween Day).

The moment the Fall themed films start airing is when I know that the Christmas films are just a hop, skip, and a jump away. Time seems to be moving pretty fast this year and I can't wait for this thread to go nuts as we all start talking about the 2-4 new films that will be airing each weekend for a couple of months.

On that note, I will try to control how often I get the urge to bump this thead, lol!

I've watched a few Hallmark fall movies and really liked them a lot. There's five movies this year and they start on September 7th. I'll probably get my Peacock subscription back by September so I can watch them.
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/news...schedule-2024/

Bump all you want! I’m still woefully behind due to my new retired life. They took a break from new movies for opening weekend of the Olympics but then had two last weekend lol.

I saw a bunch of new releases in the Vudu catalog, including last year’s Christmas titles and the Jane Austen stuff. I’ll have to refer back to this thread to see if I liked any of them enough to buy them when they’re at sale prices.

TV Line has a post up providing more details of what we will see when Hallmark Now becomes Hallmark+, and when this content might air.

Also, I noticed that H Now subscribers were treated to an early airing of the Caribbean Wedding film that is airing on the Hallmark Channel this Saturday, and I of course watched.

On the Deck The Hallmark Podcast one of the things they groaned about is that so many Hallmark Mystery films are popping up, but we get the first film and it feels like we never see follow-up films, well...I smiled when I saw that at least one Mystery film that aired on Hallmark is getting some follow-up films that seem to be exclusive to H+ members, The Jane Mysteries that star Jodie Sweetin. I will take it, more please.

I will be scrambling to watch everything Hallmark a few months from now, but despite my complaining everyone on this site knows I love the challenge of trying to catch everything as it airs or shortly after it is released.

There certainly have been a lot of mysteries that imply they're starting a new series but then disappear, and the one movie gets replayed every week. The one "series" that implied it would always involve music and ghosts seemed doomed from the start. There was also the Erin Cahill backdoor pilot that never went anywhere. I can't say anything of them have really grabbed me, but they haven't been less than ok either. It just seems like they haven't lived up to the peak series like Mystery 101 or Martha's Vineyard, but those series also had multiple movies to find their footing.

The Chiefs Hallmark movie now has a premiere date of November 30th. I believe that's on Thanksgiving Weekend.

Last night was the first Fall themed movie from Hallmark called "His and Hers" starring Brendan Elliot and Lacey Chabert. They are both married lawyers on opposite sides of a divorce of a famous reality tv couple. They just threw in some scenes of NYC in the fall but there's no way the plot of this movie could actually happen in real life. You really have to suspend disbelief on this one.

I saw Lacey on the Today Show pitching her feel-good reality show, Celebrations.

I watched a couple old ones in hopes of reducing the backlog before the holiday onslaught. I thought the Niagara Falls one might be one of the lackluster national parks series, but duh, it's not a national park. Anyway, it had Jocelyn Hudon who I like, and the movie was fine overall. Junebug has Autumn Reeser meeting up with her 7-year-old self who reminds her of her childhood dreams of becoming a writer (she's an editor, like so many Hallmark lead characters). The kid was a little on the cloying side, but not bad, and the movie was fine. Win for me that the wife watched both without complaining. Honestly these probably appeal to her more than Furiosa or other theatrical action flicks.

There are six Hallmark fall themed movies airing every Saturday for the next six weeks and then they start the Countdown to Christmas movies. I think they should at least wait until Halloween is over before going to Christmas movies 24/7.

It used to be that you could rely on the The Good Witch film to guide you into the Christmas Countdown movies, you get a fun to watch Halloween film, and Thanksgiving and Christmas films are right around the corner. I think a Christmas film aired a week after Halloween last year (I could be wrong though), which to me was pretty darn early to start airing Christmas films.

Wow, I decided to Google when the first Counddown film aired in 2023 and it was Checkin it Twice on Friday, October 20, 2023 (which I watched no later than Sat morning), I totally forgot how early the films started last year and it looks like the trend will continue this year.

I think after the Fall themed films we should get a Thanksgiving film or two before the Countdown kicks off in earnest (but maybe a turkey day film is in the mix of the Fall films).

I will say this, it is actually a fair amount of work for me to put up a tree and my nativity display (I have a lot of pieces to display) just a few weeks before Christmas to then take it down when Epiphany arrives, so this year I am going to enjoy my artificial tree and nativity by putting it up no later than a day or two after Halloween (which is on a Thursday this year), so like Hallmark, I am a bit guilty of jumping the gun on putting up a Christmas tree and nativity display very early in the Holiday season.

Hallmark officially transitioned to Hallmark+ this week and I have been enjoying the new content.

I happened to pick a couple of 2024 films to watch, and they used the exact same trope: "If I win this competition, I can save the family business!"

An Easter Bloom had Aimee Teagarden as a farmer who enters a flower-arranging competition, and Benjamin Hollingsworth is a pastor who takes an interest in her. This is part of Hallmark's faith-based line, so they did talk about prayers and God, but it wasn't heavy-handed. Watchers complained about Hollingsworth's inconsistent Southern accent but I didn't pay much attention to it.

Shifting Gears has Katherine Barrell and Tyler Hines in a auto-restoration reality show, and like the flower one, it ventured into new territory, even though I can't say I learned a lot about auto restoration. Barrell has only been the lead in one Godwink movie, but she was fine. Teagarden is one of my faves, but this one was a little more interesting to me.

Countdown to Christmas starts on October 18th with 47 new movies.
https://variety.com/lists/hallmark-c...-finnish-line/

Hallmark locked in earlier and LOADED.
Clear out the DVR because they have Thursday evenings covered too on their secondary Hallmark Mystery channel with Miracles of Christmas.
https://www.hallmarkmystery.com/mira...-2024-preview/

My Xfinity dvr has plenty of room and I can’t wait to fill her up.

I watched The Heiress and the Handyman with Jodie Sweetin and Corey Sevier, fully expecting to dislike it. I didn't, but it wasn't great either. It's a fish-out-of-water scenario in which Sweetin loses her family wealth, finds a place in her family's hometown, enters a local competition, etc. All the standard tropes.

I just watched that one, and it was fine. I agree that there's no way that the legal system would allow that scenario, but the old-married-couple bit was kind of a different angle. Chabert and Elliott have been in several movies together, of course, and they dropped in an "all of my heart" Easter egg line.

While I did not love this film as much as some folks on-line did (I think there is an article or two out there hinting that there should be a sequel), it was great seeing Chabert and Brennan Elliott together again. I like to think that this film takes place kind-of sorta in the same world as the All Of My Heart films.

The twist with the reality tv couple was also a nice reveal.

It has been awhile since I have seen the All Of My Heart trilogy, but I could swear that Elliott mentions how much Chabert likes goats in this film, and that was a thing in the All Of My Heart films.

There was a goat mention, and I remember that point when I watched the AOMH films earlier this year.