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The Eagles won’t be playing on Thanksgiving. But the ‘A Philly Special Christmas Special’ animated holiday special will be.

Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson star in the nine-minute stop-motion animated video, and Travis Kelce and Patti LaBelle are guests. Tune in to see Jason Kelce riding a donkey.

Eagles linemen Lane Johnson (from left), Jordan Mailata, and Jason Kelce and "A Philly Special Christmas Special" executive producer Connor Barwin and producer Charlie Hall standing with unPOP animation studio cofounders Marie Hart and Peter Heacock and the figurines they created for the "A Philly Special Christmas Special" short film. It premieres on YouTube at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving.
Eagles linemen Lane Johnson (from left), Jordan Mailata, and Jason Kelce and "A Philly Special Christmas Special" executive producer Connor Barwin and producer Charlie Hall standing with unPOP animation studio cofounders Marie Hart and Peter Heacock and the figurines they created for the "A Philly Special Christmas Special" short film. It premieres on YouTube at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving.Read more9.14 Pictures / Vera Y Records
    by Dan DeLuca
    Published 

Eagles fans, your Thanksgiving evening entertainment plans are now set. For nine minutes, anyway.

At 8 p.m. on Thursday, the stop-motion animation A Philly Special Christmas Special will premiere on the A Philly Special Christmas Special YouTube page.

It features 20 handcrafted puppets created by the Philadelphia animation studio unPOP, including figurines depicting Eagles singing offensive linemen Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson.

And yes, Travis Kelce, too.

That’s Jason’s brother and duet partner on “Fairytale of Philadelphia,” who plays for the recently-defeated-by-the-Eagles Kansas City Chiefs and, in case you haven’t heard, is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.

UnPOP cofounders Peter Heacock and Marie Hart spent more than 5,000 hours, over five months, to complete the video in their Mount Airy studio. The figurines are dressed in hand-sewn clothing featured in 5,000 individual photos shot at 24 frames per second.

The studio, who have done commercial work for clients including Starbucks and The Macallan Scotch whisky, produced an Eagles-adjacent project with a 2021 series of videos called Merrill’s Memories that animated stories told by longtime Birds play-by-play announcer Merrill Reese.

The nine-minute film shows the Eagles offensive linemen rallying their friends for a holiday show. It features A Philly Special Christmas Special songs, including Mailata with Patti LaBelle on “This Christmas” and Jason Kelce on the as-yet-unreleased holiday classic-to-be “Dominick the Donkey.”

The double vinyl LP, which comes out on Dec. 1 on Vera Y Records and benefits Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center.

» READ MORE: The Birds are singing again: Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson have a new Eagles’ Christmas album

The short film, said Hart in a press release, is a drama about the Eagles singers “trying to out perform the album they made last year, but also about how the want to win the Super Bowl this year.“ Heacock added: “There’s no denying we’re super fans of the team. This was a dream job.”

In other A Philly Special news, the Kelce brothers’ remake of the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” hit No. 1 in download sales on iTunes last week and has been streamed over 2 million times.

Official merchandise — a line of T-shirts, crewnecks, and hoodies, ranging from $30 to $76 — is available at Homage.com. As with the vinyl release, which is on sale through phillyspecialchristmas.com, all profits will be donated to CCTC, CHOP, and other Philadelphia area charities.

A new Philly Special song — this one featuring Lane Johnson and a guest duetting on a country Christmas classic — will be released on Black Friday.