The Big-Budget Rom-Com Is Dead. Long Live the Rom-Horror
If you can’t get people to theaters to laugh along with a couple, maybe you can get them to scream along with them.
Illustration by Camille Deschiens for Bloomberg Businessweek
Companion, out Jan. 31, opens with a meet-cute: Iris is grocery shopping when she exchanges glances with Josh, who then accidentally knocks down a whole display of oranges. Oops! But as with other buzzed-about coming soons—Heart Eyes and Drop—those rom-com tropes are about to get turned viciously inside out. Has Hollywood given up on love?
“Audiences, especially now, are so savvy. They know all the tricks,” says Companion writer-director Drew Hancock, who relates to his characters’ deeply ambivalent relationship with love and romance. “I’ve been in relationships, and I have a billion repressed thoughts. I’ve been the bad guy, and I’ve been the guy who’s been wronged.”