The Love Hypothesis follows Olive Smith, a biology PhD candidate who kisses her department's most intimidating professor on impulse, purely to convince a friend she has moved on from a crush. Dr. Adam Carlsen goes along with it, and the two strike a deal to keep faking a relationship in public. Lili Reinhart plays Olive opposite Tom Bateman as Carlsen, a scientist so notoriously difficult that half the lab avoids him.
The film adapts Ali Hazelwood's novel, which built its audience the way most romance hits do now, through readers passing it around online until a studio came calling. Amazon MGM picked up the rights years before a frame was shot, which is typical for this kind of adaptation. The gap between option and release is long, and a lot of scripts never make it out the other side.
This one moved through Bisous Pictures, the romance focused label that producer Elizabeth Cantillon runs under MRC Film specifically to turn bestselling romance novels into films. It is a small but telling piece of industry infrastructure built around a genre that studios spent years treating as an afterthought, and The Love Hypothesis is one of its highest profile titles yet.
Claire Scanlon directs from a script by Sarah Rothschild. Scanlon previously made The People We Hate at the Wedding, another ensemble comedy built on characters who are constantly saying the wrong thing to each other, which tracks with a story that runs on miscommunication and denial.
Reinhart also produces, which suggests more than a casting choice. Hazelwood's fan base built the book into a bestseller before a studio was involved, and having one of the leads with a producing credit signals the adaptation was trying to keep faith with that audience rather than just borrow its name. Rachel Marsh plays Olive's best friend Anh and Jaboukie Young-White rounds out the supporting cast. The whole thing starts streaming globally on Prime Video from Wednesday 23 September.
