‘A Mouse Hunt for Christmas’: How Expanse Squeaked Out a VFX-Fueled Romp in Time for the Holidays

Starting next week, Norwegian audiences will be the first to dive into the mouse-vs.-human hilarity of A Mouse Hunt for Christmas (Hvis ingen går i fella), a new live-action/CG holiday comedy from Fantefilm starring expressive, realistic little animated rodents. The movie will open November 8 in Norway before rolling out across Nordic, Baltic, European and Middle Eastern markets.

Directed by Henrik M. Dahlsbakken (Returning Home, The Devil’s Balloom), the film tells the story of a family of mice, preparing to celebrate Christmas — when humans unexpectedly invade their home. What follows is a funny, clever and sometimes explosive battle to reclaim their ground.

Oslo-based Expanse was chosen as the end-to-end animation and VFX partner, responsible for designing the four main CG characters and delivering more than 500 VFX shots, totaling 32 minutes of character animation. Haymaker in Sweden contributed with bluescreen work and exterior plates.

“The brief and scope were easy to understand but turned out to a huge challenge to pull off: create a family of believable, lovable and talking CG mice. I am very proud of the result and happy that we succeeded at the task,” says Fredrik Fottland, CEO & VFX Supervisor at Expanse.

Rodents Race to Release

The film’s pre-Christmas release demanded strict adherence to schedule, as missing the window would postpone the premiere a full year. Editorial ran at Fantefilm, but locking the cut proved difficult when the main characters, the CG mice, were still missing from large sections of the film.

“We ended up with an early soft lock of the CG mice, and kept giving feedback until a few weeks before the DCP delivery,” says Thea B. Kevin Karlsen, Producer at Fantefilm.

Director Dahlsbakken adds, “You’re fighting for every frame while the clock is ticking. We had a fixed budget and a fixed delivery date, so it was a balancing act every single day. Working together with the animation team at Expanse made that fight possible — they cared about the characters as much as I did and never lost sight of the big picture.”

To keep integration fast and reliable, Expanse captured on-set data for every camera setup featuring the mice. “We used Artec Leo to gather 3D LiDAR scans of the environment for tracking and shadow-catching, and props that the characters were to interact with,” says Fottland. “We captured 360° HDRIs for lighting, used grey and chrome balls, and even brought a fur ball so the look dev team had a reference for rim light and how the fur behaved in different environments.”

All the environments and plates were filmed physically on set; only props the mice touched were built as digital doubles. “Collecting the right data isn’t a vanity checklist,” Fottland adds. “It’s about speeding up camera tracking and light integration, reducing costly iterations later.”

The production’s backbone was a USD pipeline linking Maya for animation and rigging, Houdini for fur and lighting, Karma XPU for rendering and Nuke for compositing. “USD improved cross-department collaboration, with the flexibility to swap assets and update lighting without breaking downstream dependencies,” says Eilef Sandnæs, Light & Pipeline Lead. “It was critical when editorial changes hit late in the game.”

Jonas Martin Larsen, CG Supervisor, emphasizes the team effort: “We had short deadlines and a lot of creative notes. The collaboration between animators and the director was key — Henrik pushed for personality in every shot, and the team delivered under pressure.”

A Festive Finish

For Dahlsbakken, the film was more than a by-the-book holiday project — it was a creative battle for the helmer. “Directing is about persistence,” he says. “You’re building a world that must feel real, even when half of it isn’t. Far from being just a visual extra, animation is a craft that demands precision and soul. And when the mice came to life, it gave the film a heartbeat.”

Distributed by Nordisk Film Distribusjon in the Nordics and Sola Media internationally, A Mouse Hunt for Christmas will also reach cinema audiences across Europe and the U.S. — a milestone for Fantefilm and Expanse’s work in live-action-integrated animation.

“Holiday films are unforgiving,” says Karlsen. “You can’t move the release date. You can’t compromise on charm. What we learned is that the right team make the impossible possible.”

A Mouse Hunt for Christmas premieres this weekend and will open theatrically in Norway on November 8.

Releases are also planned for Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey and the Middle East.

Watch the English-subtitled trailer below. The Norwegian trailer is available to view on YouTube.

fantefilm.no | expanse.no