The George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol was released in 1984.
This adaptation premiered as a television film on December 17, 1984. George C. Scott plays Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens’s miserly London businessman whose encounter with supernatural visitors transforms his view of Christmas, generosity, and responsibility.
The film was directed by Clive Donner and filmed largely in Shrewsbury, England, whose historic streets helped create its Victorian setting. Its production design and location work give the movie a distinctly traditional visual style, while Scott’s performance emphasizes Scrooge’s bitterness before gradually revealing his vulnerability.
The story itself is much older than the film: Dickens published the novella A Christmas Carol in 1843. The 1984 production is therefore one of many screen adaptations, not the original version. It is sometimes confused with later animated or theatrical films that use the same title, but the George C. Scott television adaptation is specifically the 1984 film.