Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer) is preparing to adapt Robinne Lee’s best-selling romance novel into a film for Prime Video called The Idea of You. Anne Hathaway is already signed on to star and will be joined by Nicholas Galitzine (Purple Hearts, Cinderella) for a story that finds its characters attending a music festival.
Showalter is directing The Idea of You, which tells the story of Sophie (Hathaway), a 40-year-old divorced mother. Sophie’s husband Dan ended their relationship to be with a younger woman, and now he’s canceled plans to take their 15-year-old daughter to Coachella, one of the largest (and hottest) concert events of the year. Sophie, fed up with Dan’s negligence, decides to take Dan’s place as their daughter’s chaperone. During the fest, Sophie meets Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), the 24-year-old lead singer of the world’s most popular boy band, August Moon. Wow, between 4*Town in Turning Red and Boyz 4 Now of Bob’s Burgers, are boy band story arcs suddenly in vogue? Is a BTS road trip adventure film in the works too?
As it turns out, Galitzine will star in Red, White & Royal Blue, a movie my partner is dying to see. Uma Thurman, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Clifton Collins Jr., Stephen Fry, Sarah Shahi, Rachel Hilson, Ellie Bamber, Aneesh Sheth, Polo Morin, Ahmed Elhaj, and Akshay Khanna also star.
Red, White, & Royal Blue will follow the Mexican-American character Alex Claremont-Diaz (Perez), who, upon his mother’s (Thurman) election as President, is promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, brilliant―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a long-running feud with his royal counterpart across the pond, Prince Henry (Galitzine). And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an altercation between the two, U.S./British relations worsen.
Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instagramable friendship grows into something more meaningful than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could complicate his mother’s re-election campaign, upend two nations, and begs the question: Can love save the world?
Red, White & Royal Blue, based on Casey McQuiston’s best-selling novel of the same name, is a hot starring vehicle for Galitzine, whose star continues only to rise. Between Hathaway and Galitzine, the sun won’t be the only thing making Coachella unbearably hot. I’m not kidding about the heat. I went to Coachella ’06, the year Tool and Depeche Mode headlined, and nearly melted in the Indio Desert sun. My only salvation was the Heineken Air Conditioned tent.
What do you think of the premise for The Idea of You? Do you think Sophie and Hayes’ age difference will cause a stir online? Let us know in the comments.