After years of an on-again, off-again relationship, it seems like Hollywood is finally falling back in love with the romance genre.
“Wuthering Heights,” a Victorian romance novel, breathed new life into the box office this weekend, with help from stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. “People We Meet on Vacation,” an adaptation of Emily Henry’s popular novel, topped Netflix’s movie list after its January release. And “Heated Rivalry,” a gay hockey romance book-turned-TV show, has become a cultural phenomenon in just three months since it was released.
Producers, agents and executives working in the genre say the recent boom of romance in TV and film is due in great part to studios’ seeing the power of the core audience whom authors help entice to screens. Some studios are now offering six- to seven-figure deals to those authors, making them hot commodities in Hollywood.
“Audiences want to feel the yearn,” said Lauren Levine, the producing partner of bestselling romance author Colleen Hoover. The film adaptation of her novel “It Ends With Us,” which cost about $25 million to make, racked up more than $351 million worldwide at the box office. Her next film, “Reminders of Him,” which is being released by Universal Pictures, will debut in March. (Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of NBC News.)
Millions of those fans are part of the online community known as “BookTok.” The avid readers, who often review and share their takes on the latest releases, particularly like to rally around the romance genre, or “smut” books, which include explicit, steamy scenes. Their interest has helped some authors who have been around for years suddenly see their books top bestseller lists almost overnight. It’s a community that gained steam during the Covid-19 pandemic, Levine said, when fans had no other way to connect.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, it’s about the sex,’” Levine said of the genre’s popularity. “The books are spicy, yes, but that’s the least interesting part. It’s about the connection and the yearning and the romance.”
Of course, romance adaptations aren’t new — long before “It Ends With Us,” many popular books — including “A Walk to Remember” (based on Nicholas Sparks’ popular book), “Pride & Prejudice” (which has been remade several times) and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” — had huge commercial success in the ’90s and the 2000s when they were adapted.
But some in the industry credit streaming for helping fill a void that they say was left behind by traditional studios, which have spent the last decade doubling down on superhero adaptations and recycled intellectual property.
“Audiences have always loved romance,” said Kira Goldberg, Netflix’s vice president of film. “It’s just that the theatrical studios stopped making them for a time, and the streamers picked up the opportunity, knowing that those old films that people had made way back when are still classics.”
From 2020 to the third quarter of 2025, shows and movies adapted from romance books were responsible for 4.5% of Netflix’s streaming revenue, according to Parrot Analytics, with the top shows being “Outlander” (which Netflix picks up after Starz), “Bridgerton” and “You.”
The streamer continues to invest big in romance to meet what Goldberg described as “an underserved audience’s needs.”
On a cold Los Angeles evening in January, Netflix held a summer-themed premiere for “People We Meet on Vacation.” Dozens of BookTokers were among the attendees, having scored tickets through fan sweepstakes. In addition to being among the first to see the movie, they were given special copies of the book, as well as tote bags celebrating the film.
The next day, Netflix announced two forthcoming films based on other Henry novels, “Funny Story” and “Happy Place,” making Netflix home to the unofficial Emily Henry Universe.
“Buyers are always asking us for titles in the romance genre,” said Mirabel Michaelson, an agent at UTA who represents Ali Hazelwood, the author of “The Love Hypothesis.”
Hazelwood’s book began as a piece of “Star Wars” fan fiction about the relationship between the characters Rey and Kylo Ren. It’s now a film due from Amazon MGM this year.
And now, “people are chasing Ali for her next novel,” Michaelson said.
Among the keys to a successful adaptation, producers say, is casting — though that doesn’t necessarily mean A-list stars.
“You want to please the fans,” said WME agent Mary Pender-Coplan, who represents Henry. “You want the core audience to love it and then that pulls other people in concentric circles.”
Elizabeth Cantillon, who is producing “The Love Hypothesis,” likens the responsibility she feels to the book’s avid fans to how she felt when she was an executive at Sony Pictures overseeing the James Bond movies and the franchise first cast Daniel Craig.
“My brothers called me and said, ‘Don’t screw it up,’” Cantillon said of choosing someone to play the British spy. “We had to respect the fans, but we couldn’t just make a movie for the fans.”
In the case of “The Love Hypothesis,” the filmmakers made a casting choice that tickled the book’s fan base, enlisting Tom Bateman, the husband of Daisy Ridley, who played Rey in the “Star Wars” movies, to play the male lead.
“That’s not why we cast him,” Cantillon said of Bateman’s connection to the source material. “But when we did it, people went crazy.”
Often, romance adaptations have budgets in the $25 million to $40 million range, making them a cheaper option than many competing genres (though the budget of “Wuthering Heights,” directed by Emerald Fennell, is closer to $80 million). That can remove some of the obligation to cast top stars and allow filmmakers to look instead for chemistry and authenticity to the source materials.
The romance genre has also broadened to include “romantasy,” titles that blend romance and fantasy, like Rebecca Yarros’ “Fourth Wing,” which Michael B. Jordan’s production company is developing as a series for Amazon Prime, and “Quicksilver,” which Cantillon’s company is adapting for Netflix.
Cantillon said she believes part of the proof of the renewed appetite for the genre came from audiences’ rewatching old romantic comedies, like the films of writer-directors Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron, over and over again on streaming.
“They play really well, and they’re really rewatchable,” Cantillon said. “But doesn’t every generation want their own love story?”
Meyers, widely considered the queen of the romance genre, hasn’t made a movie since 2015’s “The Intern.” Warner Bros. this month greenlit her next project, a romantic comedy due in theaters on Christmas Day 2027.
It seems Meyers is just as excited to get back into it, writing on Instagram about the news: “See you at the movies!”
Leave a Reply