When was the last time that you watched a romantic comedy in theatres?

While the genre has seen success on streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime Video, Hollywood continues to hold back on giving new rom-coms traditional releases. 

With You, Me & Tuscany currently in theatres, the question remains: what happened to rom-coms, and why do so few of them make it onto the big screen? 

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by culture writer CT Jones to learn why studio executives are so afraid of putting rom-coms on the big screen, and what happens when the genre gets relegated to streaming at home. 

We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Why don’t studio execs want to put rom-coms in theatres?

CT: I think right now we have to realize that we are in a movie world that is shaped by the post-pandemic of it all. We had this huge time where no one could go to movie theaters, and afterwards there was this huge campaign — mainly by actors mind you, not studio execs — to get people to fill more seats.

So right now, if the goal is filling as many seats as possible, they want to find projects that are the lowest common denominator — the one that you could get mom, and grandma, and your 13-year-old and your dad [to] all at the same time. Hollywood is like, “I have the answer for you. What is a Friday night without another superhero movie?”

And it’s how we kind of get this constant churn where you think back and go: “I know what I’ve seen in theatres the last couple of months. It feels like it might all be the same thing.”

Elamin: You’re maintaining a reportorial objectivity about this. I’ll just say it for you: I’m a little bit bummed out about that. 

When I think about the pandemic of it all, what you’re really referring to is, we had a whole bunch of movies that were supposed to come out in theatres, then they ended up coming out on streaming. And then what studios end up learning is [that they] don’t actually have to put this in a movie theatre. People will still watch it at home.

But to me, there’s a real kind of grief, because there’s a thing that you lose when only one kind of movie ends up playing at your movie theatre. Maybe we could give a bit of history here. How have rom-coms done at the box office in recent years?

CT: So I would like to say this up front: rom-coms make money, and I think we’re all ignoring this fact.

So we have Anyone but You — the Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell movie —  $200 million globally. For a rom-com, the budget is typically between $500 [thousand] and $75 million. So in terms of movies, these are very low-budget, but the growth that they can have is exponential. 

You have Ticket to Paradise [in] 2022 with Julia Roberts — $168 million [at the box office]. The Lost City, 2022 [with] Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum — $192 million. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy made $140 million, and that’s without ever releasing in theatres in the U.S. So that was just from international — which kind of immediately comes to mind, what could they have made if they had actually shown it in a single theatre in the United States?…

You, Me & Tuscany is very unique because it’s one of the first rom-coms to come out in theatres in a while, and it also has two Black leads — which is relatively uncommon for these big blockbuster films. 

Indie filmmaker Nina Lee … wrote on Twitter that she has an indie rom-com coming out called That’s Her starring Coco Jones and Kountry Wayne. It’s already been shot, but when she had gone to pitch it to studios, they said that they all wanted to wait to see how You, Me & Tuscany does. Her tweet — and the thread about the pressure [put] on Black rom-coms — [was] picked up by a bunch of Twitter aggregate sites like Pop Base, and it started this huge conversation about [whether] every movie should have to hold the weight of its predecessor, and what kind of burdens we put on films like this. And the creator of You, Me & Tuscany even said, “Encourage people to come out to theatres under the assumption that if this movie does poorly, there’s a good chance you won’t see one like it again for a very long time.”

You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with CT Jones produced by Nikky Manfredi.