The Love Hypothesis movie hits Prime Video: Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman star in a rom-com that began as Star Wars fanfiction
The most improbable adaptation pipeline in publishing — AO3 to bestseller list to streaming — just completed its final stage, with a casting twist George Lucas couldn't have scripted.
The Love Hypothesis is now streaming on Prime Video, and its premise is standard-issue rom-com machinery: Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart), a Stanford biology PhD candidate, fakes a relationship with Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), a hotshot professor his students call "Dr. Evil," to convince her best friend she's over a shared crush. Grumpy meets sunshine, science ensues.
The origin story is where it gets genuinely deranged, in the best way. Ali Hazelwood — then a neuroscience professor writing under a pseudonym — first posted this story to Archive of Our Own in 2018 as "Head over Feet," a Rey/Kylo Ren alternate-universe fanfic. Adam Carlsen is literally named after Adam Driver. Reworked for traditional publishing, the book spent 10 months on the New York Times bestseller list, sold in 40 countries, and single-handedly kicked off publishing's Reylo-to-romance gold rush.
The casting is the punchline
- Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley. Yes, that Daisy Ridley. Rey herself. Her husband is now starring as the character modeled on Kylo Ren, which makes this the most elaborate piece of Star Wars fan service ever accidentally produced. Ridley has said she knew about the book's origins but had forgotten by the time he booked it.
- The film knows what it is. Director Claire Scanlon (Set It Up) and screenwriter Sarah Rothschild wink at the source constantly — most obviously by dressing Bateman in head-to-toe black for nearly the entire runtime.
- The bench: Rachel Marsh as best friend Anh, Jaboukie Young-White as Malcolm, Nicholas Duvernay as Jeremy, Arty Froushan as Tom. Hazelwood and Reinhart both executive-produce.
About Chapter 16
Readers of the book care about exactly one adaptation question, and it involves the infamous Chapter 16 — the steamy centerpiece that made the novel a BookTok fixture. Scanlon, talking to The Hollywood Reporter about bringing it to screen, confessed:
"You can tell by my talking about this, I'm still nervous."
She needn't be. Early reviews are warm — Collider went 8/10, calling the film
"a successful experiment led by Reinhart and Bateman."
The one thing standing between The Love Hypothesis and the top of Amazon's charts this weekend isn't another rom-com at all — it's Reacher and its new spinoff Neagley, currently squatting on the platform's most-watched summit.
Previously we wrote: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's Brothers premiere on Apple TV: the whole plot started with something his mother said
