Gerard Butler hopes to sing more after 'joyful' experience with Christmas musical

Watch: Gerard Butler discusses singing again in The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland

Gerard Butler has rekindled his love for singing after making The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland, Sky's festive animated musical where he takes on the role of Santa Claus.

The movie follows Santa as he decides to go on a special trip to Wonderland at Christmas after he received a letter from the Princess of Hearts asking him to visit. When he and his reindeer head down the rabbit hole, though, they learn that Christmas has been banned by the tyrannical Queen of Hearts (Emilia Clarke) and they'll need to enlist the help of Alice (Simone Ashley) to bring festive cheer back to the land.

It's a fun concept, and certainly original, which is why Butler enjoyed working on it so much, and he tells Yahoo UK how it made him want to sing on screen again. The actor last starred in a musical in 2004's The Phantom of the Opera, and since then has sung in films like How to Train Your Dragon but not as often as he'd like, which is why The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland was the "most fun" he's had in years.

"I think I've sung a couple of things here and there, but they were not musicals, so it was nice to dust off the vocal chords," Butler says. "And it had to happen very quickly. I went in, did a warm up, it was not sounding so good and then dived right into the songs. But it came back quickly, and also these songs are are so fun to sing.

"It reminded me that I do want this second life back in a recording [booth], like being in the recording booth with [director] Peter Baynton there, and Camilla [Deakin] and Ruth [Fielding], the producers, having a blast with Guy Chambers, the composer, playing music, it was the most fun few days I have had in years. Just taking it to new places, and finding that music, the cabaret music, the pop, the rap.

"It was great, I think I need to try and sing some more — I'd definitely get better, that's for sure."

Playing Santa was a dream for Butler because it allowed him to show an entirely different side of himself to viewers, especially after years of being a Hollywood action star in films like Olympus Has Fallen, Law Abiding Citizen, and of course 300.

"I think I'm still a child at heart, I grew up with all these classic tales," Butler explains. "In fact, it was these fantastical myths, and legends, and stories that I often dreamt I was in as a child and I went, 'I want to actually be in those, I want to affect people like those stories [do]'.

"So for me it was a chance to show the other side of Gerard Butler, the kind of goofy, silly, joyful, bit all over the place, ADD [side]. But ultimately [being part of a story] with a good heart, trying to do the right thing but just always having to be pushed in the right direction."

The actor found Baynton's script to be "so smart and very effective" that he and everyone he has taken to see it were in hysterics watching it: "I took all my friends, they all laughed, they brought their kids, everybody, the adults and the kids laughed. And for days after, I had good feeling about how it left me, how it kind of percolated into me, the joy of it."

Being Santa was an interesting stretch, he admits, because the story required him to talk in rhyming couplets and burst into song whenever the moment called for it. It may have been "tricky" to get right but it was also a rare creative experience, one full of collaboration and delight.

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"The personality for Santa just kind of came, especially working in the booth with Peter Baynton," Butler reflects. "He's a genius and we were like two little kids together, and when you're in that kind of creative environment and space you're ready to do anything, any noise that'll come out of my body [I'd make], any kind of idea [was on the table]. It's a tool to create a fun character."

Being given the chance to voice Santa was "cool", Butler goes on, because he knew exactly how he wanted to approach the iconic character: "It just hit me, when I started reading the script I enjoyed it so much and I could see the moments I wanted to take. Sometimes you read a script and you go this is perfect now, right now, I don't want to overthink this. I don't want to go away, I want to go in because I feel like I'm here right now as Santa.

"All those parts of me just feels like it works and I wish that I could have walked into the studio and just done the whole thing in one day, and that rarely happens — It happened in my Guy Ritchie movie RocknRolla."

"This one took a while, it was a tricky one to get together this movie so it took a while to to sort it out, I was just raring to go," he goes on. "We really had to fight to keep this thing going just because of time schedules. But I knew I had to make it because I knew I had to affect people the way it was affecting me."

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland premieres on Sky Cinema on Friday, 13 December.