After audiences fell in love with the Sydney Sweeney/Glen Powell romantic comedy Anyone but You and the success of the Lindsay Lohan film Irish Wish, The Hollywood Reporter says studios are swiping right on the genre once again.
Anyone But You writer-director Will Gluck tells the trade, “There’s been no dearth of rom-coms in the last 10 years. They’ve just all been on … on Netflix and Hulu and Amazon.”
He continues, “I think the quality has probably been just the same as in theaters. The problem is we do not laugh at home. You do not laugh when you’re watching at your house. You do not laugh when you’re watching on a phone.”
Gluck adds, “When you’re in a theater with other people around you — this is my theory based on nothing — I just feel that you’ve given yourself up to want to enjoy something … I think a big part of our movie was how people felt watching it with others in a theater.”
Gluck may say his theory is “based on nothing,” but the people are proof: Anyone but You spawned a viral trend of audiences singing and dancing to the final credits song, Natasha Bedingfield‘s “Unwritten.”
Richard LaGravenese, who directed the upcoming romantic Netflix movie A Family Affair starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, offers, “I don’t know if it’s maybe just from the pandemic … [that people are] leaning toward more fun, aspirational stories, fantasy stories, stories that you can just have a good time in.”
As the saying goes, everybody loves a happy ending.
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