Arnold Schwarzenegger is trading the Terminator's leather jacket for a red suit and a sleigh this holiday season. Prime Video has unveiled the first teaser trailer for The Man with the Bag, a fantasy action-comedy that casts the former California governor as Santa Claus and is set to arrive on the streaming service on December 2, 2026.
The logline is about as high-concept as a Christmas movie can get. When Santa's magic bag is stolen, he is forced to turn to his naughty list for help, recruiting a thief named Vance to track it down. Together with his daughter and a ragtag crew of misfits, Santa and Vance must pull off the biggest heist of Vance's criminal career in order to save Christmas itself.
Alan Ritchson, best known for his work as Jack Reacher on the small screen, plays Vance, the larcenous recruit at the center of the story. The supporting ensemble is stacked with comedic performers: Awkwafina, Michael Cyril Creighton, Liza Koshy, Kyle Mooney, Ken Jeong, and Jesmille Darbouze round out the cast.
Adam Shankman directs. Shankman's résumé leans heavily on musicals and broad crowd-pleasers, and his involvement signals that the film will likely balance its action beats with song-and-dance energy and family-friendly humor. The Man with the Bag is officially classified as fantasy, comedy, family, and action - a genre blend that suggests the heist framework is really an excuse for slapstick set pieces, holiday sentiment, and the visual novelty of a bodybuilder-turned-movie-star squeezed into St. Nick's boots.
A Teaser Built on the Sight Gag
The teaser's central image, of course, is Schwarzenegger in full Santa regalia. It's a casting decision that trades on decades of audience association: the same screen presence once used to intimidate opponents in Predator and Commando is now being deployed for warm-hearted comedy. The teaser leans into that contrast rather than running from it, positioning Schwarzenegger's Santa as a physical, take-charge version of the character - one who would presumably rather rappel down a chimney than squeeze through it.
That tension between Santa's traditionally gentle image and Schwarzenegger's action pedigree appears to be the film's primary comedic engine. Prime Video is releasing the teaser more than two months ahead of the December 2 premiere, a timeline that gives the marketing campaign room to build recognition through the fall before holiday viewing season kicks into high gear.
A Heist Movie Wrapped in Tinsel
The plot places the film in a familiar subgenre: the Christmas caper. By structuring the story around a theft and a crew assembled to undo it, The Man with the Bag borrows the rhythms of films like Ocean's Eleven and repurposes them for a family audience. Vance's arc - a career criminal enlisted by the one man who supposedly knows who's been naughty and who's been nice - provides the moral scaffolding such movies tend to require.
The naughty-list premise also does double duty as a running joke and as the film's emotional hook. Santa seeking out a known thief means the movie is at least partly about second chances, and about the idea that even people who have landed on the wrong side of the ledger can be useful when Christmas is on the line. Pairing Santa with his daughter adds a generational dynamic to the crew, while the "misfits" mentioned in the synopsis give the film a built-in ensemble-comedy structure.
A Crowded Holiday Slate
The Man with the Bag lands on Prime Video on December 2, 2026, positioning itself squarely in the post-Thanksgiving window when audiences traditionally begin their seasonal movie watching. That timing puts it in direct competition with the usual flood of holiday titles across streaming platforms, though the combination of Schwarzenegger's name recognition and the trailer's overtly comedic tone gives it a distinct identity.
For Schwarzenegger, the role represents another step in a career that has moved steadily toward family-oriented material in recent years, and for Prime Video it adds another star-driven original to a holiday programming lineup that the service has been investing in heavily. Whether audiences are ready to accept the man who once promised "I'll be back" as the face of Christmas cheer remains to be seen, but the teaser makes clear the filmmakers are fully aware of the incongruity - and are counting on it.
Ritchson's involvement adds a second layer of action credibility to the project, giving the film a leading man capable of handling the physical demands of a heist narrative while Schwarzenegger anchors the comedy. With Shankman at the helm and a deep bench of comedic talent behind the two leads, The Man with the Bag is shaping up as one of the more unusual entries on this year's holiday release calendar.
No runtime has been announced, and no audience rating is yet available for the film.
Source: About Amazon
