The Love Hypothesis
Amazon
It’s not in theaters, but it is hitting Amazon Prime Video. The Love Hypothesis is a high-profile romantic comedy based on a novel by Ali Hazelwood, but it actually traces its origins to a surprising source: Rey and Kylo Ren fan fiction inspired by the Disney Star Wars trilogy. And that’s not even the most interesting part.
The Love Hypothesis stars Lili Reinhart of Riverdale fame, but also Tom Bateman as her love interest. Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley, who played Rey in the Star Wars trilogy, the basis for Reinhart’s character in the film. Wild. I’m not sure if this is a “what are the odds?” situation or if this connection directly led to Bateman’s casting somehow.
Whatever the case, The Love Hypothesis is out tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 23 on Amazon. Critic reviews are coming in, and right now, the film has an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score, quite good for the genre. It helps that it had good source material, as the original novel got second place in the Goodreads Choice Awards for romance, losing by just 683 votes out of 435,000 to People We Meet on Vacation, which was adapted into a film, also out in 2026, which starred Emily Bader and Tom Blyth. That had a 78% Rotten Tomatoes critic score and a 68% audience score.
Here’s the synopsis for The Love Hypothesis:
“The Love Hypothesis follows Olive (Lili Reinhart), a brilliant Ph.D. candidate focused on her future in academia. But when she realizes her best friend Ahn (Rachel Marsh) has fallen for her crush Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay), Olive impulsively kisses intimidating professor Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman) to prove she’s moved on. What begins as a desperate act of friendship spirals into a fake relationship with rules, boundaries, and a mutually beneficial agreement. When their arrangement begins to blur the lines between performance and reality, Olive is forced to test her most daunting hypothesis yet: that love might actually be worth the risk.”
The Love Hypothesis
Amazon
I am not quite sure how this translates from Reylo fan fiction, but somehow it managed to work extremely well, it seemed, and this is likely going to be a big hit for Amazon. There is no follow-up novel, so this is likely to be a one-and-done. Here’s some praise for the film from Mashable:
“A bubbly blast that’ll have your insides fizzing. Yet despite this pure fun, The Love Hypothesis is missing one key ingredient that would truly make its experiment stick the landing: yearning.”
Gotta have yearning! Most of the positive reviews do have some caveats, but this seems like it will please fans of the original book. We’ll see how it does starting tomorrow.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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