This is a big deal. Next March, 20th Century Fox will release a big screen, John Hughes-esque romantic flick about teenager in love. The twist? He’s gay.
Love, Simon, based on Becky Albertalli’s 2015 YA novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and directed by Greg Berlanti (Riverdale, The Flash), follows Simon (Jurassic World‘s Nick Robinson), a teenager who starts an email romance with another closeted classmate (the title is a play on how he ends his correspondences).
From the same studio and producers of The Fault in Our Stars, Simonhas all the markings of a classic, mainstream teen coming-of-age flick: football games, drunken parties, school carnivals. But the romantic leads are two guys. It’s sweet, sad and, ultimately, ground-breaking especially because it looks kinda generic.
The fact that queer stories get the big studio treatment is probably a good sign for the normalisation of same sex love on the big screen even if it means that the film itself might be a bit boring if you’re not into the classic Hollywood teen romance flicks.