‘The Idea of Having You’ has brought the fanfic phenomenon back to the foreground. The Prime Video film, based on the novel of the same name by Robinne Lee, which has become a bestseller in the United States, tells the romance between Solène (Anne Hathaway), a 40-year-old single mother, and Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the 24-year-old leader of a boy band called August Moon, the favorite of Solène’s daughter.
The film has everything we can ask for from this type of production: love, passion and ups and downs between two characters who live in two very different worlds. But what it also has is a different ending compared to the book, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among those who have consumed both products. Asked by TV Insider about the decision to modify the ending to make it more hopeful, director Michael Showalter appeals to the need to end a romantic film with optimism for the future:
“There is a long history of romantic movies changing their endings so that the two characters are together at the end. There is a pragmatic answer to this, and that is that the viewer of a film wants to see that there is at least some hope for the protagonists. We don’t have to tell the audience how things ended, but at least we give them the opportunity to try to find out for themselves. As a fan of the genre, I love when a romantic story ends with the two of them having coffee, but that tells me there is hope.”
The producer, Cathy Schulman, takes up the director’s gauntlet and also defends the change, explaining that the tastes of readers and viewers are usually different:
“I feel like the satisfaction factor is different when you are reading a book at home.. There is nostalgia and a kind of melancholy. When you close the book, you can say, ‘Wow, what a stage of life those people shared.’ But in a movie the visual impact is very strongso we have to believe that there are possibilities for the future.
The two endings
But well, what differences are there between the ending of the movie and the book? In the film, Solène and Hayes break up, and after the drama the film jumps in time five years, with Solène in her art gallery. Suddenly, we see Hayes enter the gallery, in an emotionally charged reunion.
The book, however, is not so optimistic about the couple. In it they also break up due to social pressure and the problems that their relationship may cause for Solène’s daughter, and there is also a time jump, but in this case of several months. That’s when we see that Hayes continues writing to Solène to try to get back, but She ignores the messages until Hayes gives up, giving up all hope. return.
‘The Idea of Having You’ is now available on Prime Video.
