Hilarie Burton's Quarantine Christmas Movie Idea Could Save The Holidays

Lifetime and Hallmark may need a Christmas miracle in order to make fresh holiday movies this year, but, thankfully, Hilarie Burton and her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan have an idea. On Thursday, Burton pitched a Lifetime Christmas quarantine movie during an interview she and Morgan did for SiriusXM and Entertainment Weekly's EW Live radio show. The One Tree Hill actor has starred in several Lifetime Christmas movies in the past, including The Christmas Contract, which brought together a number of her OTH co-stars. She's set to star in a 2020 holiday movie for the cable channel, too, but due to the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic, filming has been delayed.

"We were supposed to be filming mine in May," Burton revealed of her next Lifetime Christmas movie. Because of COVID-19, the untitled movie had to be put on hold along with every other Hollywood production. Since most holiday TV movies are filmed during the summer months there's a real chance that there may not be many new festive films ready for Christmas 2020. But Morgan and Burton do have a backup plan that would involve lovelorn Christmas enthusiasts falling for each other in the age of quarantine.

Lifetime has Morgan to thank for basically saving Christmas, because during the interview he pitched the idea for a quarantine Christmas movie to Burton. "Maybe you do a Christmas movie doing quarantining and social distancing," he said. Burton caught on quickly, adding, "So it's just a Zoom Christmas?"

A Zoom Christmas may sound strange, but Lifetime, Hallmark, and Netflix have all made weirder concepts work (never forget The Knight Before Christmas). "You fall in love in quarantine, and Christmas is the first time you see the person!" Burton said. "That's it!!!" Morgan added, "We cracked it. We'll shoot it here on the farm!"

The couple may have been joking, but they've already found creative ways to help and entertain people while sheltering in place at their picturesque farm in Rhinebeck, New York. Burton has been sewing and delivering masks to essential workers in her Hudson County community, and together, she and Morgan started a talk show for AMC called Friday Night In With the Morgans. Clearly, these two actors excel at making sure the show goes on, so why shouldn't that extend to Christmas movies?

A Lifetime Christmas movie featuring Burton and Morgan would be a dream come true. But even if A Zoom Christmas doesn't happen, the OTH star has been thinking up possible alternative ideas to bring holiday merriment to viewers, with or without new movies. "I've been pushing for Lifetime to do some more unscripted kind of stuff," she teased. "So perhaps we'll switch over to some unscripted stuff this year, and then next year we will start filming as soon as we get the green light and it will be an avalanche of Christmas."

Either way, Morgan has nothing but the utmost faith that his wife will find a way to make the holiday season special for fans who look forward to her Lifetime movies every year. "Hopefully you have time between now and December to get one done," he said. "But we just don't know. I still have hope that you'll save Christmas somehow."

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