2019 Romantic Comedy Is Getting A Horror Sequel

Summary The 2019 rom-com Isn't It Romantic has a horror sequel in developemnt.

The sequel, Isn't It Scary, would likely follow a character being trapped in a horror movie.

The idea behind Isn't It Scary has already been used in the 2015 movie The Final Girls.

Isn't It Romantic is getting a horror-themed sequel. The 2019 movie starred Rebel Wilson as Natalie, an architect living in New York who finds herself trapped in a rom-com and forced to live out the tropes of the genre in her life. The star-studded cast of the movie also included Liam Hemsworth, Adam DeVine, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Betty Gilpin, and Bowen Yang. Isn't It Romantic reviews were mixed, with a 69% Rotten Tomatoes critic score being undercut by an audience score of 51% and a lukewarm box office total of $48.8 million against its $31 million budget.

Per Deadline, New Line is putting a horror movie-themed Isn't It Romantic sequel into early development, which would presumably center on the lead character becoming trapped in a horror movie. The follow-up, titled Isn't It Scary, has Look Both Ways screenwriter April Prosser in talks to pen the script. At the time of writing, nobody has been officially attached to the project. As such, it is unknown if the movie is intended to center on Rebel Wilson reprising the role of Natalie or an entirely new character.

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The Horror Version Of Isn’t It Romantic Already Happened

An Underrated 2015 Horror-Comedy Had Isn’t It Scary’s Premise

While a years-later sequel to Isn’t It Romantic taking on a new genre is a unique prospect, it may not behoove the upcoming project to take on the horror genre next. This is the case because the horror version of the movie has already been made. The 2015 meta horror-comedy The Final Girls, which only had a limited theatrical run, had a very similar setup, involving a young woman and her friends who find themselves trapped in the fictional 1980s slasher Camp Bloodbath.

Related Why So Many Modern Horror Movies Are Set In The 1980s Since the late-2000s, the 1980s has grown increasingly popular as a setting for various contemporary horror movies; here is why it is so popular now.

The movie has an even more important connection to Isn’t It Romantic beyond boasting a similar premise. Both the 2019 romantic comedy and The Final Girls were directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, though they had different screenwriters. Strauss-Schulson, who had previously directed A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas in 2011, brought his signature visual aesthetic to both titles, differentiating the real worlds from the movie worlds by utilizing a fantastical aesthetic with heavily saturated colors and stylized designs.

The Final Girls was written by M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller, while Isn’t It Romantic was written by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman.

One other issue is the fact that the Isn’t It Romantic sequel would likely pale in comparison to The Final Girls. The Nina Dobrev horror movie featured a strong emotional core with a story about a young woman grappling with her grief over the death of her mother. While Isn't It Scary has not yet been written, so it has a chance of finding an equally strong hook, the previous installment in the franchise leaned more heavily on the comedy than on sentiment, so its sequel still seems unlikely to follow in the 2015 movie's footsteps.

Source: Deadline