Attention
The script got the attention of Hollywood with a spot on the coveted Black List in 2015, a survey of the industry’s best unproduced screenplays. It was picked up by MGM and even had “Game of Thrones’” Emilia Clarke to star, but it started to fall apart when the studio wavered and Clarke had to go back to shoot her television show. The team, including Powell, was undeterred.
“We met with a lot of people who really liked the script but so many people would say, ‘oh it’s not right for our platform,’ or ‘it’s not right for our slate,’” said “Set It Up” director Claire Scanlon. “There were so many rules for people who were picking up films and if it didn’t fit perfectly with exactly what they had coming out, then they didn’t want to do it.”
That all changed in a meeting with Netflix, when executive Matt Brodlie agreed to make it in the room — he said yes in January and they were shooting by May. Netflix has also released a few other romantic comedies this year including “Ibiza,” “When We First Met” and “The Kissing Booth.” And, likewise, Amazon was the shop that took a gamble acquiring “The Big Sick.”
It’s not just streaming platforms re-embracing the genre — the big studios are too. Universal has “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” coming July 20, with many of the original cast as well as Cher and Andy Garcia. And Warner Bros is releasing the adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s popular novel “Crazy Rich Asians” on Aug 15.
Nina Jacobson, who produced “Crazy Rich Asians,” saw an opportunity in the story about a Chinese American woman who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s parents to take audiences to a world they haven’t seen in a mainstream American movie, and also touch on universal themes.
“So many (romantic comedies) became so formulaic,” Jacobson said. “But it is a genre that has been historically beloved and successful and this felt like a great way to re-approach it.”
The independent realm, which has been keeping rom-coms alive for some time, also has a few boundary-pushing releases on the schedule, both about people in their early middle age finding love. The Sundance charmer “Juliet, Naked,” based on the Nick Hornby novel and starring Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd and Ethan Hawke, comes out Aug 17, followed by “Destination Wedding,” which boasts a ‘90s dream cast in Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves who star as single wedding guests.
“It’s a dark comedy,” said “Destination Wedding” producer Gail Lyon. “They’re playing the idea of two broken people who have had the (expletive) kicked out of them in the love department. Can they really find enough hope to find something or is cynicism going to rule the day? It’s really funny and really honest about finding love later in life.”
Lyon, who also produced “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!,” knows that the movie business is cyclical, but thinks that rom-coms needed to get back to the basics — character and dialogue — while also “twisting the paradigm a little bit to keep it fresh,” which she says “Destination Wedding” (Aug. 24) does.
If 2018 is the start of a new era of the romantic comedy, Carlson thinks that one day we may trace it back to “The Big Sick.” She compares it to how “Moonstruck,” which won three Oscars in 1988, helped get the genre out of the cynical “Annie Hall” phase and pave the way for “When Harry Met Sally” and all the classics that hit spawned.
“People have written the romantic comedy’s obituary over and over and over again,” Carlson said. “But the genre will always survive as long as it’s pushed forward in ways that reflect contemporary society. And it will also survive as long as love and relationships elude and fascinate us — that is, it will never go away.”