Scrooged

Details

High-spirited high jinks on Christmas Eve put Frank Cross (Bill Murray) in a ghostly time warp in this hilarious take-off of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol as Scrooged is released on 4K UHD SteelBook 2nd November 2026 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Cross has made the meteoric rise from the depths of the mailroom to become president of television network IBC, but success has done little for his Christmas spirit. Cynical, selfish and spectacularly insensitive to those around him, Frank sees the festive season primarily as another opportunity to boost ratings.

His latest obsession is an extravagant live Christmas Eve broadcast of A Christmas Carol, promoted with a deliberately terrifying television commercial and produced with little concern for either his increasingly exhausted staff or the programme's enormous cast.

When mild-mannered executive Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait) questions one of Frank's decisions, he promptly finds himself out of a job, while Frank's long-suffering assistant Grace (Alfre Woodard) struggles to reconcile her demanding employer with the needs of her family. Even the arrival of Frank's relentlessly cheerful brother James (John Murray) does little to soften his mood.

But Frank's carefully controlled Christmas begins to unravel when his deceased former boss Lew Hayward (John Forsythe) unexpectedly returns from the grave with a warning: unless Frank changes his ways, an unpleasant fate awaits him.

Before the night is over, he is visited by three decidedly unconventional Christmas spirits. A maniacal New York cab driver takes him back through his past, an aggressively cheerful fairy introduces him to the consequences of his behaviour in the present, while a towering and considerably more sinister final visitor offers Frank a terrifying glimpse of the future awaiting him if he continues along the same path.

The supernatural journey forces Frank to revisit the choices and relationships that transformed an ambitious young television employee into the cold-hearted executive he has become, including his lost relationship with former girlfriend Claire Phillips (Karen Allen).

Directed by Richard Donner (Superman, The Omen, Lethal Weapon) and released in 1988, Scrooged relocates Dickens' familiar tale of redemption to the ruthless world of American network television, combining the original story's supernatural elements with Bill Murray's trademark deadpan humour and a distinctly cynical take on the commercialisation of Christmas.

Murray is joined by Karen Allen, John Forsythe, John Glover, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Johansen, Carol Kane, Alfre Woodard and Robert Mitchum, while the film also features appearances from a number of familiar faces playing themselves as part of Frank's increasingly chaotic live television production.

The new Limited Edition SteelBook presents the 101-minute film on 4K Ultra HD, with the UHD presentation featuring Dolby Vision and HDR10 high dynamic range and an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack.

The release also brings together more than 50 minutes of supplementary material originally created for the film, including director Richard Donner's commentary and a selection of behind-the-scenes featurettes exploring the production and its modern interpretation of Dickens' classic.