Even before the trailer officially screened, it had already leaked — a fitting start for a romantic comedy about things that refuse to stay contained.
Prime Video unveiled the first teaser for The Love Hypothesis at its inaugural Obsessed Fest fan event in Los Angeles on Saturday, with stars Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman on hand to introduce the footage — and to gently acknowledge that it had already surfaced online the night before. The film, adapted from Ali Hazelwood’s 2021 novel, arrives on Prime Video on September 23.
The story follows Olive (Reinhart), a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford who, after realising her best friend Ahn has fallen for her own crush Jeremy, impulsively kisses the forbidding professor Adam Carlsen (Bateman) to signal she has moved on. What begins as a desperate act of friendship hardens into a fake relationship with formal rules — until the performance starts to feel real.
The film was announced in October 2022, with director Claire Scanlon and screenwriter Sarah Rothschild attached from the start. Reinhart and Bateman were cast in July 2025, with the rest of the ensemble confirmed the following month. Principal photography took place in Montreal last summer.
Among the details that have energised the book’s fanbase: Hazelwood originally wrote the story as Star Wars fan fiction, drawing on the dynamic between Kylo Ren and Rey. Bateman, who plays the Kylo Ren-inspired Adam Carlsen, is married in real life to Daisy Ridley — who played Rey in the sequel trilogy. The coincidence is either Hollywood serendipity or a very specific casting joke, depending on one’s tolerance for that sort of thing.
Scanlon previously directed Set It Up and episodes of The Office, while the supporting cast includes Rachel Marsh, Nicholas Duvernay, Jaboukie Young-White and Arty Froushan. Composer Laura Karpman, an Emmy winner, was hired to score the film. Prime Video has built a track record in the book-adapted romance space with titles including The Idea of You and Red, White & Royal Blue, and The Love Hypothesis lands in that same lane — with an unusual origin story that gives it a ready-made conversation starter before a frame has been seen.
