Amazon/MGM is close to securing a $30M worldwide deal for “Hello & Paris,” a romantic comedy set to star Javier Bardem and Kate Hudson. Production is expected to begin later this month. More curiously, it is planned as a streaming release with no theatrical rollout.
The film is loosely based on Deborah McKinlay’s novel “That Part Was True” and will be written and directed by Elizabeth Chomko (”What They Had”). It also marks Hudson’s first film since her recent Oscar-nominated role in “Song Sung Blue.”
The story centers on two opposites—a fiercely independent landscape architect and a troubled bestselling novelist—who form a connection through long-distance exchanges after a tense first meeting in Paris, in the spirit of classic rom-coms like “Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “You’ve Got Mail.”
What feels increasingly shortsighted here is the reflexive way Amazon/MGM Studios is just treating this one as a streaming-only product, as if a $30M, star-driven romcom with Javier Bardem and Kate Hudson has no real theatrical value left to offer. This is exactly the kind of mid-budget, adult-skewing studio film that used to live or die in cinemas.