Mark your calendars and restock on tissues: The Hallmark Channel will re-air its heartwarming Five More Minutes Christmas movie series this October, and the films have one heck of a soundtrack. Inspired by Scotty McCreery's career-making 2017 single "Five More Minutes," both holiday flicks are stirring meditations on love and loss.
Hallmark will re-air 2021's Five More Minutes on Oct. 23. The film stars Nikki DeLoach as a woman whose Christmas wish is answered when her beloved late grandfather's journal turns up. It's a touching ode to the bond between grandparents and grandchildren — a theme lifted straight from McCreery's song. The American Idol alum wrote "Five More Minutes" as a tribute to his late grandfather, who passed away shortly before the singer-songwriter penned the tune.
Five More Minutes (Hugh Tull/Crown Media)
"It was a very honest song, and I was just kind of spilling out my emotions and how I felt," McCreery recalled in a 2019 PBS NewsHour interview. The chorus of the emotional tune reads, "I wish I had me a, a pause button / Moments like those, Lord knows I'd hit it / And give myself five more minutes."
For star Nikki DeLoach, Five More Minutes the movie had deep personal resonance: "The script was sent to me about two days after my dad died, and I didn't touch it for a second," DeLoach told Wide Open Country in 2021. "Then the night before the funeral, I just couldn't sleep. I didn't sleep at all that night and I was like, 'I might as well just read the script,' because they needed an answer pretty fast. I started reading it and I think I sobbed my way through the entire script, but obviously I connected so deeply to it."
The second film in the series, Five More Minutes: Moments Like These, will hit the Hallmark Channel on Oct. 21. Starring Ashley Williams and Lucas Bryant, the film follows a young widow who lost her husband suddenly one Christmas Eve. She returns to the home they shared and, while there, she finds unexpected hope and healing for herself and her grieving young son.
Five More Minutes: Moments Like These (Bettina Strauss/Crown Media)
Five More Minutes: Moments Like These airs Oct. 21 on the Hallmark Channel, with Five More Minutes following on Oct. 23.
