Netflix is sending Maddie Ziegler back to Christmas again and again. The first trailer for In a Holidaze, the streamer's upcoming romantic comedy with a science-fiction twist, arrived this week and confirms a December 2, 2026 release. Ziegler leads a cast that also includes Rob Lowe, Graham Phillips, Elias Kacavas, Patton Oswalt, Jackie Sandler, Gil Bellows, and Andrea Anders. Tiffany Paulsen directs.
The premise is familiar in shape but specific in detail: a drifting young woman makes a disastrous romantic misstep and wakes up to find herself looping through the same holiday at her family's cabin. Each reset forces her to confront what she actually wants, a structure that borrows from time-loop staples while swapping out the usual existential stakes for tinsel and family friction.
A Time Loop With Tinsel
In a Holidaze is being positioned as a genre hybrid, carrying credits in science fiction, romance, and comedy. That combination has become a reliable lane for streamers in recent years, though the trailer suggests the film leans harder on the romantic-comedy beats than on the mechanics of its central conceit. The loop serves as a device to push its protagonist toward self-knowledge rather than a puzzle to be solved.
Ziegler, who first became widely known through the Dance Moms franchise before building a screen career that includes The Fallout and West Side Story, takes on her first lead role in a holiday-themed studio comedy. The trailer gives her the bulk of the screen time, with the cabin setting and a rotating ensemble of relatives and romantic interests supplying the chaos that repeats.
Paulsen, whose prior work includes The Edge of Seventeen as a producer and the Netflix rom-com A Tourist's Guide to Love, moves into the director's chair here. Her background in character-driven comedies fits the material, which depends on making the same Christmas feel different each time it resets.
A Stacked Supporting Cast
Lowe, a veteran of both network drama and broad comedy, appears in a supporting role, while Phillips and Kacavas fill out the film's romantic geometry. Oswalt brings his distinctive comic timing to the ensemble, and Jackie Sandler, a frequent presence in Happy Madison productions, rounds out the cast alongside Bellows and Anders.
The combination suggests Netflix is aiming for a broad, four-quadrant holiday release rather than a niche genre exercise. December 2 places the film squarely in the pre-holiday corridor, when streaming platforms typically push family-friendly fare.
What the Trailer Shows
The trailer establishes the loop quickly. Ziegler's character navigates the same cabin, the same relatives, and the same awkward romantic decisions before waking up to do it all over. The repeated structure allows for escalating gags, and the trailer leans on the contrast between her mounting frustration and the relentless cheer of the season.
What remains unclear is how the film handles the resolution. Time-loop stories live or die by their ending, and In a Holidaze will need to justify why this particular Christmas is the one that finally breaks the cycle. The trailer, true to form, keeps that answer close.
Release and Outlook
In a Holidaze arrives December 2, 2026, exclusively on Netflix. The film carries an English-language, Hollywood production credit and a listed runtime that has not yet been announced. It enters a crowded holiday-release window, though the time-loop hook gives it a distinguishing angle compared with more conventional seasonal romances.
For Ziegler, the role represents a step into leading-lady territory in a mainstream comedy, a shift from the darker, more dramatic projects that have defined her recent filmography. For Netflix, it is another entry in a holiday slate that has become an annual fixture.
Whether the film can turn its repeated Christmas into something audiences want to revisit themselves is the question the trailer leaves open. The answer arrives in December.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
