Inside ‘The Love Hypothesis’: How Director Claire Scanlon, Star Lili Reinhart and More Adapted BookTok’s Biggest Obsession

Some stories refuse to stay on the page. The Hollywood Reporter’s Beyond the Book column explores what happens when books make the leap to screen and beyond — unpacking what stayed, changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it. *** “You can tell by my talking about this, I’m still nervous,” director Claire Scanlon admits while on a Zoom with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the release of Prime Video‘s The Love Hypothesis. The filmmaker is alluding to a much-discussed moment of the bestselling book (Chapter 16 — a rather, ahem, steamy sequence) in the new film adaptation, debuting this week on Prime Video. That trepidation is no false modesty. There’s a heightened fan anticipation that Scanlon and the rest of the creative team are aware they’re up against. Authored by Ali Hazelwood, the story began as Star Wars’ Reylo fan fiction (featuring Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren) published to Archive of Our Own in 2018. The romance follows Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart), a graduate student and Stanford Ph.D. candidate who embarks on a fake romance with the notoriously stern Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), known as “Dr. Evil” to his students. The move is solely to reassure her friend Anh (Rachel Marsh) that Olive’s feelings for her bestie’s current love interest are entirely behind her. Since its publication in 2021, The Love Hypothesis has since become a full-blown phenomenon — a New York Times bestseller, a BookTok obsession and a career launchpad, turning Hazelwood into a household name. Her books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, several already in the book-to-screen pipeline. In the lead-up to the film, the craze has been gestating on social media. Reinhart’s first TikTok post introducing Bateman as her co-star — participating in the “Nice to Meet You” trend — garnered 3.2 million likes, while their viral “scooping-up” video surpassed 12 million. The posts sent fans into a frenzy — before anyone had seen a frame of the actual film. And in a twist fans didn’t miss, Bateman’s casting as the Ren-inspired Carlsen came with an unplanned callback to the novel’s fanfiction beginnings. (Bateman is married to Ridley in real life.) It’s all fueling what may end up being one of the year’s biggest romance titles, an experiment five years in the making, in which Hazelwood’s book has always been “the canon, like our Bible,” Scanlon tells THR. Ahead of The Love Hypothesis’ Sept. 23 premiere, THR spoke with the film’s own team of scientists — director Scanlon, star and executive producer Reinhart, producer Elizabeth Cantillon and Hazelwood’s agent Mirabel Michelson — on how they found the material, assembled their creative team, cast their leads, and tackled the novel in a test of their own hypothesis about the science of on-screen romance. What It Takes to Nab a Viral Sensation UTA agent Mirabel Michelson, producer Elizabeth Cantillon and director Claire Scanlon discovered the viral bestseller and assembled its creative team. Claire Scanlon and Elizabeth Cantillon attend the The Love Hypothesis U.K. special screening. Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures MIRABEL MICHELSON (UTA FILM AND MEDIA RIGHTS AGENT) I read the entire thing in one sitting. It was an incredible novel. It felt so fresh and different. I signed Ali around the publication of her debut novel, The Love Hypothesis, in 2021. We submitted the novel on the film and TV side, from there to a wide range of creative elements: producers, writers, directors, actresses. [Out of] those submissions, we received raised hands of interested parties. Ali met with all of the creative parties who were interested in adapting, and it became clear that Elizabeth Cantillon was the right person to link arms with for this one. She immediately understood the themes and the characters and the emotional core. Also, Elizabeth is a powerhouse producer in the industry, and she has so many incredible credits. ELIZABETH CANTILLON (PRODUCER) It was 2021. I got the book from Mirabel Michaelson. I read a lot of things, but this really stood out because [of] the setting and the authenticity of the characters. Sometimes romances, especially comedies, are set in a generic place. They’re magazine editors or travel writers. But the specificity of a young woman in STEM and at Stanford. … I see young, smart women in a college setting, but they’re graduate students, super smart, and also trying to figure out their lives just like all women. They’re in a challenging field. It’s mostly men. Immediately, when I read it, I wanted to make it, but it was a competitive situation, and other producers were also interested. I met with her [Ali] on Zoom because it was the beginning of the Zoom times, and I was lucky enough that she chose me. I was at MRC, and they optioned it, and we went right to work with [screenwriter] Sarah Rothschild, who I did not know, but I had read. She was wonderful. CLAIRE SCANLON (DIRECTOR) Elizabeth is really the generator of all of this. It starts with her. She’s a phenomenal producer. Authors trust Elizabeth. She instills confidence in authors, and then she instills confidence in her screenwriters who adapt them. Likewise with me, who’s directing it. She was really like, “What do you want? How do you want to see this?” MICHELSON Everyone who was interested read the novel, had their own creative take, and Ali heard those pitches directly. Elizabeth just connected with the material in a way that felt like she was the right partner to work with. We followed her lead as she shepherded it throughout the development process, finding those people to come on board who also shared in her vision. SCANLON Funnily enough, I had never heard of the book. I did not read the book initially. I read the script, so it was a really interesting phone call because Elizabeth already knew that I am not necessarily interested in romantic comedies. Ironically, I keep seeming to do them, but when they’re good, they’re good. I remember my first phone call with Elizabeth, after I read the script that Sarah Rothschild adapted from the book, and I said, “Damn it. This is too good not to want to. I don’t want anyone else to do this because it’s actually so well done, so well written. It’s undeniable. I would like to direct this project.” CANTILLON Sarah just kept writing funnier and funnier scripts, and as the scripts evolved, we went to get a director. Claire had directed Set It Up. It’s so good, and it’s also cinematic. It has a real style, really well cast, and so comedy-forward. Ali’s writing is very funny, and I wanted to make sure that we preserved that sincerity and [that] the love story is real, the friendship is real. But that it’s funny? That’s what distinguishes Ali’s voice. Claire is funny, and her movies and television are so funny. I felt lucky to get her and that she wanted to do it. We had a good squad of Sarah, me, and Claire. Crafting an Adaptation With a Hands-Off Author and Dedicated Fanbase For the film, two audiences were top of mind during the adaptation process: the book fans and Hazelwood. With The Love Hypothesis, Hazelwood let the film’s creatives take the reins of translating her novel, but also lent her support — an approach that will hopefully please fans. Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman interact with fans ahead of the The Love Hypothesis U.K. special screening. Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures MICHELSON Ali is an executive producer on the project, so she’s involved in that way. One of the biggest decisions that an author makes is who to link arms with. So she’s really putting trust in Elizabeth Cantillon to build this team of people who can help achieve this shared creative vision for the material, and hopefully get the project made. CANTILLON I sent her [Hazelwood] scripts maybe once or twice, but she didn’t want to know everything. She wasn’t like that. Every author’s a little different. She just sort of trusted us to go off. We shot one day here in L.A., so she came [to set], and that was a real treat. SCANLON The pressure to realize all these wonderful characters she’s created in her head is immense, but she’s such a delight, and so kind. You can see the way she lifts up up-and-coming authors. So to get her stamp of approval really helped me sleep at night. I think she saw it [the film] in March or April in New York, and I just breathed such a sigh of relief knowing that she was pleased. CANTILLON It’s a very hard thing when you’re adapting these books that become quite popular and have a very vocal fan base. SCANLON Like any adaptation, you really want to hold those people [fans] in the back of your mind, but I personally feel like Ali is the person I’m making the movie for. CANTILLON Adaptations are always about making choices, and you just hope that you’re making the right ones. SCANLON I really felt strongly that this should be a grounded, very lived-in world; that it’s not an anomaly. That it felt like Stanford. It was shot in Montreal. We did a day in Caltech (California Institute of Technology), which I really think helped. CANTILLON Early on, we had to decide what the focus was. All the time you’re spending on those subplots, you’re not spending with Adam and Olive or Olive and Anh. That being said, it was important that she [Olive] be embedded with a group of friends because that was such an important part of the book, and it’s an important part of academic life for young people. We didn’t spend a lot of time on what was going on in the academic world, the politics of the academic world, just as it impacted Olive. It’s more like the upstairs-downstairs of it. If the upstairs is Adam and all those people, then the downstairs is our guys. So I think we focused really on the struggle of these kids, how to balance your life, have your ambition, and be a girl in a world of boys and men. SCANLON I wanted you to feel like this isn’t two beautiful actresses pretending to be in the biology department in their lab with their cute little lab coats. I wanted it to feel hard. We really wanted to honor that these women deserve to be there. They work their asses off, and it’s not easy. It’s not just because they got there; that’s not the hard part. Staying there is the hard part. No life outside of your research and your studies, and why it’s worth it, and that these women in science belong there. Like for me, what drew me especially to the project was the female friendships and the support. Bringing Olive and Adam to Screen Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman stepped into the roles, bringing emotional depth, backstories, and undeniable on-screen chemistry to the adaptation. The Love Hypothesis Philippe Bosse/Prime Video LILI REINHART (ACTRESS/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) I was sort of doing independent film and television for a minute after Riverdale, just because inherently when you do something so commercial for so many years, you want to stretch and grow as an actor. But there’s something really special about doing something that has a really strong fan base, in the sense that people already care about it. In this day and age of such unknowns in the film industry, you never know what people are going to resonate with. To sort of have that guarantee that people really care about something is really comforting as an actor and really exciting. Of course I want to be a part of something that is beloved. It’s an honor. CANTILLON I’ve been a fan of Lili’s for a long time. She did a day of work on a movie I produced, Charlie’s Angels, that Elizabeth Banks directed. And I was like, “I am interested in that girl.“ So when Amazon brought her up because she had a deal there, I was delighted! REINHART I loved Ali’s book. I was in Venice for the film festival, and so I had this very beautiful romantic backdrop while I was reading. I don’t read romance books, but I really enjoyed it and surprised myself. I hadn’t done a rom-com for a few years, but I had the best time ever shooting Look Both Ways in 2021, and it felt like I was ready to embark on doing that again. And because I loved the book, I loved the character dynamic, the slow burn of it all; I was convinced to do it. SCANLON We talked a lot about Olive’s life before the movie [storyline] starts. She’s 15 when her mom passes away suddenly within a month, which is actually how pancreatic cancer can move. What would that be like to be 15 years old and have the only family you’ve ever known pass away, and have to navigate the world? I think in many ways, the fact that she did it and her moral compass became, “I don’t want any other kid to have to go through what I did” — it’s very noble. But it had consequences in terms of her emotional IQ. At 15, she hadn’t been in love; she didn’t know how to navigate that. So it makes total sense that she has this very chaste crush for two years on Jeremy (played by Nicholas Duvernay) and does absolutely nothing. That tracks. CANTILLON Tom, I knew who he was. He’s really a fine British actor and happens to look like that. So when he auditioned, which was all on Zoom because of where he was and Lili was working, he was just the hands-down who we wanted. We were lucky that that guy exists in the world and that he wanted to do our movie. He was so game to come and play this part. SCANLON I really wanted him to get the role. It wasn’t just the aesthetics and that he has the look of an Ali Hazelwood character. It was really his emotional vulnerability once you pulled back the layers. He could come across as on the spectrum, and I think in the book too he comes across that way, but he’s not. I think it’s experiences of being bullied that let him be that way, and wanting to toughen up his students so that they didn’t get hurt the way he did, get taken advantage of. If they were tougher and had more of an armadillo exterior, then they couldn’t get bruised as much as he did by the people stealing his work and people yelling at him and trying to sabotage him and all those things that you learn more about in the book. Tom Bateman Philippe Bossé/ Prime Video Navigating the Fan Fiction of It All Scanlon and Cantillon acknowledge the novel’s Star Wars origins and explain why casting focused on finding the right actors over internet meta-commentary. CANTILLON It’s bizarre! We didn’t lead Tom into the meta of it, but it’s definitely a thing. SCANLON [Elizabeth] said, “Well, you should know this is based on a very popular book, and it stemmed from someone’s love of fan fiction.” I said, “I understand none of those words that you just said.” I didn’t know what fan fiction was. I was like, “I don’t understand what Star Wars has to do with this.” I didn’t know what Reylo was. I didn’t know anything, so she really was my entry into this whole world. CANTILLON I don’t know what [Tom and Daisy] know and didn’t know, but when we saw him with that handsomeness, that voice, the height also with the acting chops? He’s so proper! SCANLON I didn’t even think of the Daisy Ridley of it all. I was like, who cares? That’s not how you cast. That’s something the internet can get excited about, but that’s not how you cast a movie. You cast the right person. Re-creating Some of the Book’s Most Anticipated Sequences The director details how filming the pivotal first kiss scene both established the movie’s central chemistry and recreated the novel’s iconic cover pose, as well as how she balanced fan expectations and visual storytelling to adapt the novel’s famous intimacy sequence. Berkley; Prime Video SCANLON Of course we meant to honor the book cover. We shot 50-50 both ways, but we really prioritized the one that’s on the book where he’s on the left of the screen, and she’s on the right. When we did that scene, I was like, “We have a movie!” I just knew the whole way it played out: the way she was back on her heels, the way Anh saw them, the way he behaved? Even in that shot where he looks at her badge and he lets it go, and he’s not at all impressed. Tom and I actually talked a lot about that scene. This is a guy who’s just work, work, work. He hasn’t been touched in a while. I think that for him, this woman comes up on a Saturday night; he’s working late, and she touches him in a way that he hasn’t felt in so long. It opens a little window, and then she immediately slams it shut. She’s like, “Oh no, no, no! This isn’t about you.” Then he gets to be pissed. Like, what’s going on here? It’s just such a great scene. Olive [is] immune to his [Adam’s] outside tough exterior and abusive behavior; [the] mean Dr. Evil didn’t get to her. Even when they’re having coffee, she’s not like how everyone’s reacting. Being in the office when they first make the deal, she’s laughing at him. And he’s like, “Why?” She’s never scared of him. It’s almost like she’s his kryptonite. I felt a lot of pressure for Chapter 16 because it was pretty well done, and also everyone’s imagination is very powerful. I think, especially for women, when it comes to romance and lust and sensuality, we are more imaginative. It’s almost an impossible task to try to create what people felt when reading Chapter 16 on the screen. Taking all of that and then distilling it in a way that was still beautiful and also sensual was really something that was discussed a lot. It’s not nearly the length or duration [as in the book]. But we know we had a lot to play with, and I know other films like People We Meet on Vacation opted not to do it. So in that respect, we wanted to make sure we did it, but didn’t take it too far. I just wanted to make sure that no one felt uncomfortable and just felt the connection. That’s why it’s as long as it is, but also not as long as the chapter. Launching the Ali Hazelwood Cinematic Universe The adaptation of Hazelwood’s debut novel is just the beginning: “We’ve been very intentional about using that momentum to continue growing her broader brand.” MICHELSON This novel launched Ali’s hugely successful publishing career, [which has] just continued to grow with every novel that she writes. Her books have sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Walk into any bookstore around the world, and you’re going to find her novels for sale. I would say for sure that success has helped on the film and TV side. The Love Hypothesis, Love Theoretically and Deep End are just a fraction of the projects in development for Ali, and we’ve been very intentional about using that momentum to continue growing her broader brand. SCANLON I love that these books are becoming popular. They’re like barging through the glass ceiling. Like they are undeniable. Ali is a powerhouse. She’s a great person, but two, these are great stories that need to be told. MICHELSON She has projects all around town with a range of buyers very excited to be in the Ali Hazelwood business. But we don’t approach every project the same way, and each book does have its own world, tone and characters, so every adaptation is really a bespoke process. Our goal is always to find the right partners for each individual title. But at the same time, we’re always thinking about the larger picture of Ali’s film and TV slate, and we want the projects to complement one another and create momentum, rather than simply setting up projects for the sake of having them in development. The film and TV side ultimately feeds back into publishing, and the publishing success creates opportunities on the film and TV side. So they really do go hand in hand. Her books, adaptations, audience and brand are so interconnected. And so we’re always thinking about how each piece can build on the others and continue to expand Ali’s reach while staying true to her storytelling and her audience. The Love Hypothesis Team Wants to Bring More Love Stories to the Screen Hazelwood’s debut is one of many romance novels getting the adaptation treatment. Given their surge in popularity, creators are embracing the dedicated fan bases, reclaiming romantic comedies from dismissive labels, and ready to deliver affirming stories that celebrate all forms of love. MICHELSON The romance genre is extremely popular on the publishing side with massive engaged fan bases, and buyers on the film and TV side recognize the potential for that to translate to the screen. These are dedicated fan bases that will spend money and show up to engage with these worlds and characters. Even in looking at Amazon with their Obsessed Fest and how they created this in-person consumer-facing festival to highlight these projects that are primarily adaptations, targeting primarily female audiences. The Love Hypothesis was, of course, one of the projects they highlighted there. Deals for these types of books are more competitive, and there are more players every day that want to get into the mix and be involved. SCANLON So many people had beaten the trope and the genre of romantic comedy to a doormat. It was like a naughty word. If you talk to Elizabeth, she doesn’t let you say rom-com. She makes you say “romantic comedy” because she’s like, “That’s another way of saying chick flick.” Why is it in the ’30s and ’40s when It Happened One Night won all five [major] Oscars? That was a rom-com. And The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday — you can go on and on about all these great movies that are technically the same thing. You can tell each story well without having to make it a chick flick. I do feel like for a certain time, people forgot that women watch things [so] making movies for women, they just weren’t doing it. REINHART The Barbie movie was such an interesting thing to watch from an industry perspective because all these articles came out where it was like a surprise women love movies, as if we didn’t know that. I do really think all of these studios were prioritizing male-centered films. There’s some crazy statistic about the lack of female leads in films compared to men who lead movies. The Barbie movie making a billion dollars [at the box office] was incredible and so encouraging, especially for women directors and just women in general. Time and time again, I feel like people learn the wrong lessons from the success of films. They go, “Oh, Barbie succeeded. We need to make any toy [or] anything that existed [into a film].” I think though people are understanding the value of romantic comedies now, and they’re understanding that quality rom-coms are being demanded of them, and not just the same thing over and over and over again. That there needs to be specific points of view, and it’s all about the characters and it’s about the chemistry. I do think there is hopefully a shift, and I do hope that this movie helps with that shift and encourages more of it. CANTILLON I’ve done many book adaptations, not all love-related, but I have to say that I feel that people find it affirming in this world that you have all kinds of love. Friends who love you, partners who love you, and family who loves you. The spectrum of love and affirmation that love exists in the world — people want that. We drifted away from it in Hollywood a little bit. Publishing picked up the slack, and now we have to catch up. Because people want to see people kiss in movies! *** The Love Hypothesis will release on Prime Video on Sept. 23.