That film was ultimately directed by John Carpenter who also had nothing nice to say about the project. The film was a disaster by the time it came out in 1992, and shortly afterward Chase would pivot again to the project he would ultimately do instead of The Santa Clause: The Chevy Chase Show.

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Chase’s contentious history with late night actually went back further than his movie career, with the comedian being eyed as a potential successor for Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show as early as 1975. After the first episode of Saturday Night, Dave Tebet reportedly said to other executives, “Chase is the only white gentile comedian around today. Think what that means when Johnny leaves.”

And in a profile cover story in New York magazine, Chase publicly toyed with the idea before dismissing it: “I’d never be tied down for five years interviewing TV personalities.” Perhaps that line is why Chase was never invited to guest host The Tonight Show like NBC executives dreamed, or why it would be another half-decade before Chase was invited again to be a guest on Carson’s show.

Circa 1993, however, things were different. Chase’s pivot to “dramatic” work had gone up in smoke. Meanwhile studios were still offering him roles like playing… the Santa Claus. So in the wake of Carson finally retiring for realsies from The Tonight Show, and his throne remaining in question as David Letterman defected to CBS, Chase took a $3 million offer from Fox Broadcasting to become their own late night gamble—after Dolly Parton passed.

In addition to signing Chase for $3 million, Fox spent another $1 million renovating Los Angeles’ Aquarius Theater into the renamed “Chevy Chase Theater.” And on Sept. 7, 1993, The Chevy Chase Show debuted on Fox, a week after Letterman’s new CBS premier and a little over a year after Jay Leno’s ascent on CBS. The Fox contender was canceled six weeks later.

In a statement to The New York Times about his show’s ignoble end, Chase said he found talk shows to be a “very constraining format” and that “my hat is off to those guys who do this kind of work. It takes a tremendous effort and long hours of commitment.” But in a telling further pivot, he said he was already looking forward to the other movie he shot in early ’93: Cops & Robbersons, a late jumper on the buddy cop movie bandwagon that paired Chase, playing a street-wise crook, with Jack Palance as a “too-old-for-this-shit” cop. It was a flop.