ABC Makes A Deal To Premiere Future Hallmark Hall Of Fame Films

Who doesn’t have a soft spot in his or her heart for at least one Hallmark Hall of Fame film? I personally can’t forget What The Deaf Man Heard, the one about the man who pretended he was deaf and was eventually privy to a whole town’s worth of secrets. Or what about Rose Hill, the sort-of western that featured a young Jennifer Garner? Of course, ever since CBS dropped the franchise after 16 years, there were questions over who would continue Hallmark’s family-oriented programming. Turns out, ABC wanted the bid.

Which is just as well, because the most recent film to be made under the Hallmark Hall of Fame banner is the Mitch Albom-written vehicle Have a Little Faith that has already begun filming and is well on its way to completion. With an agreement reached between Hallmark and ABC, we can expect to see Have a Little Faith, featuring Laurence Fishburne, Martin Landau, and Bradley Whitford, sometime before Christmas.

The agreement reached between ABC and Hallmark is a sweet little deal for both sides. According to Deadline, ABC will get to premiere the Hall of Fame films, but then the Hallmark Channel will get to re-air the movies later. So, if you miss the show on network television, you can always catch it on cable, likely repeatedly. If it seems like ABC might be losing out a little bit, the company isn’t. In recent years, ABC was home to the Walt Disney Anthology Television Series. However, in 2008 the series ended, and ABC hadn’t found anything to really fulfill its niche. That’s a better deal than Wayne Brady would have given them.