Why ‘Three Wise Men and a Baby’ Won’t Get a Sequel, Plus Paul Campbell Looks Back on Hallmark Roles
Paul Campbell has done rom-coms, Christmas movies, and mysteries for Hallmark, as well as served as a writer on a few films, and so when TV Insider spoke with him for his latest, The Cases of Mystery Lane, we had to have him look back on some of them.
We also had to ask if it’s possible we could get a follow-up to Three Wise Men and a Baby, which he co-wrote with frequent collaborator Kimberley Sustad. (He starred in the 2022 Christmas movie with other fan-favorite Hallmark leading men Andrew Walker and Tyler Hynes.)
“I’m not going to lie to you, not great,” Campbell admitted. “Hallmark has said many, many times over the years, they don’t do sequels. The problem is it’s really hard to tell a love story twice. And that movie is still a love story. It’s a story about brothers rediscovering their love for each other. We talked with the network early on about a potential sequel and they just said, ‘We love the movie. We’d love to sort of work with you guys again in another capacity, but it’s just not going to be in powers on this one.’ So unfortunately, unless we get a miracle, I would say the chances are zero.”
But don’t rule out seeing Campbell and Hynes together in a Hallmark movie again if the former has his way. Now that stars have started making cameos in films on the network, Hynes is Campbell’s pick to show up in one of his movies. “I’ll take Tyler Hines any day of the week. I think he’s hysterical,” Campbell explained. “I love him as a person and I feel like if we brought him in to cameo, he’d come in and do something really weird. He’d be on board to do something really, really strange.”
Scroll down as Campbell looks back at some of his Hallmark roles so far, from Window Wonderland to A Godwink Christmas, from The Last Bridesmaid to The Santa Stakeout.
Window Wonderland (2013)
“It’s still one of my favorite movies. There’s something so magical about the script. It was my first Hallmark movie. It was so funny. And I just remember feeling so free to be as silly as I wanted to be. I found my home with that one.”
Surprised by Love (2015)
“For some reason. I always think of the driftwood scene, building driftwood on the beach, like what a goofball that guy was. It was the same writers as Window Wonderland, [Tippi Dobrofsky and Neal H. Dobrofsky], and I just got to be silly and ridiculous. It was pure joy, from start to finish, making that movie.”
A Godwink Christmas (2018)
“Godwink was the first really sentimental movie that I did. And it was completely different from everything else that I’d done. It was where Kimberley Sustad and I met and it started the writing portion of my career. So that movie was pivotal in that sense. She pitched me the idea for Christmas by Starlight, and we wrote it, and now we have writing careers.”
The Last Bridesmaid (2019)
“The Last Bridesmaid was my first movie with Rachel Boston, fantastic script by Nina Weinman, and the first time I played a videographer. It was great. That was also really, really well written. We shot it in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Beautiful scenic locations. Just a lot of fun.”
Christmas by Starlight (2020)
“Christmas by Starlight was a wild experience because it was the first time for me as writer and actor and I felt drunk with power. I loved having control of the dialogue. I loved being able to fix the script as we discovered issues along the way or if we had to make changes because of certain production issues that came up along the way, being able to be present as the writer as well. And I felt really, really proud of what we accomplished. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, that whole movie. I felt really proud of what we were doing there.”
The Santa Stakeout (2021)
“The Santa Stakeout was great because it was my first mystery and it was like detective hijinks. Tamera [Mowry-Housley] and I had so much fun. It is really different playing detectives and sneaking around and looking for clues. That was a great way to start my mystery career.”
The Nine Kittens of Christmas (2021)
“That was just a call from the network. That was a call from Hallmark that said, ‘Hey, do you want to come and do a little cameo?’ And I said, ‘Of course I do. What movie?’ And they said The Nine Kittens of Christmas. I thought, oh, that’s hilarious. It’ll be fun to pop in and say hi to Kim in a way, but as if we had never met. So I was happy to go do that.”
Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022)
“Yeah, that was one of the best filming experiences in my life, getting to spend three weeks with those boys, again on a movie that I had co-written, and seeing it come to life. Kim and I wrote what we thought was such a fun, full of heart, silly movie. And actually having that movie come to life was pretty extraordinary. It’s made me realize just how incredible this Hallmark family that we all have really is. This is truly a family effort, that one. I will never forget it. It will always be very, very close to my heart.”
