How fan­fic­tion took over the film world

On 16^th March 2024, Prime Video’s The Idea of You, star­ring Anne Hath­away and Nicholas Gal­itzine pre­miers at SXSW. Despite its wide­spread release still being six weeks away, inter­est was piqued after the first trail­er – par­tic­u­lar­ly among One Direc­tion fans. From the first look pho­tos match­ing spe­cif­ic 1D pho­to­shoots and moments from their con­cert film Where We Are to the song­writ­ing team for the film being the same as the one who wrote smash hit ​‘What Makes You Beau­ti­ful’, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the fic­tion­al group August Moon are based on the icon­ic British boy­band. More specif­i­cal­ly, roman­tic lead Hayes Camp­bell (Nicholas Gal­itzine), is unques­tion­ably a fic­tion­al take on Har­ry Styles, from his role in the band to the place­ment and design of his tattoos.

It seems strange to think that a film based on Har­ry Styles fan­fic­tion is clos­ing a major fes­ti­val, and even stranger to think that an Oscar win­ner (Hath­away) is star­ring in it. Mean­while, Net­flix has just renewed its teen dra­ma My Life With the Wal­ter Boys, and its sec­ond sequel to Span­ish romance Through My Win­dow is also set to release this year – both based on sto­ries which orig­i­nat­ed on fan­fic­tion/­self-pub­lish­ing site Wattpad before get­ting noticed by pub­lish­ers. The recent romance film Float, star­ring Rob­bie Amell and Andrea Bang, was adapt­ed direct­ly from Wattpad. Stream­ing ser­vices are seem­ing­ly filled with films based on self-pub­lished nov­els and sto­ries that were adapt­ed from fan­fic­tion. A decade ago, this was unheard of – how did so much change in the space of the last ten years?

It’s safe to say that Fifty Shades of Grey was a cru­cial moment in this cul­tur­al shift. When the E.L. James’ nov­els became a world­wide phe­nom­e­non, it quick­ly came to light that the series start­ed out as a Twi­light fan­fic­tion enti­tled ​‘Mas­ter of the Uni­verse’ pub­lished on Fan​Fic​tion​.net. While the inspi­ra­tion for the series was light­ly ridiculed, it did not hin­der the series’ con­tin­ued dom­i­na­tion of the charts, which even­tu­al­ly led to film adap­ta­tions from Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures and Focus Fea­tures. While the films were gen­er­al­ly received poor­ly by crit­ics, they were a huge suc­cess with the gen­er­al pub­lic and were major Valentine’s releas­es between 2015 and 2018. More impor­tant­ly, they were respon­si­ble for help­ing to launch the careers of Dako­ta John­son and Jamie Dor­nan, who have sus­tained the momen­tum of their suc­cess gar­nered from that franchise.

Around a sim­i­lar time, the pop­u­lar YA fan­ta­sy series The Mor­tal Instru­ments was also rumoured to have been adapt­ed from fan­fic­tion, this time Har­ry Pot­ter-based, giv­en that the author Cas­san­dra Clare, had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten sto­ries for the fan­dom. She denied these rumours in a post on her Tum­blr, in which she said, ​“In a post-Fifty-Shades world, there is no harm in say­ing ​‘my books are rewrit­ten fan­fic­tion’ if they are, but [The Mor­tal Instru­ments] are not.” but inter­net sleuths have point­ed out the sim­i­lar­i­ties. The series received a film adap­ta­tion star­ring Lily Collins, Jamie Camp­bell-Bow­er and Rob Shee­han, as well as lat­er being adapt­ed as a Net­flix series.

Both fran­chis­es serve well as start­ing points for up-and-com­ing actors, and this again proved true for Jacob Elor­di, who began his career in The Kiss­ing Booth, anoth­er high-school romance film that was adapt­ed from a Wattpad nov­el (not quite a fan­fic­tion), writ­ten by a 15-year-old Beth Reek­les. While the star was crit­i­cised for recent­ly bad-mouthing the fran­chise as ​“ridicu­lous” and ​“not uni­ver­sal”, there is no deny­ing that roles like Eupho­ria and Salt­burn were unlike­ly to have found Elor­di if it wasn’t for the pop­u­lar­i­ty of his breakout.

In 2019, the first main­stream film to emerge from the One Direc­tion fan­base was the After series, based on the nov­els by Anna Todd, with anoth­er lead char­ac­ter based (albeit much more loose­ly) on Styles, played by Hero Fiennes Tif­fin. That fran­chise amassed a world­wide box office tak­ing of just under $169 mil­lion across five films. A quick peek at the Rot­ten Toma­toes scores for the films reveals they’re not con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces, and yet, they kept being made and watched. With­out them, the upcom­ing The Idea of You may not have been made – or at least may not have secured the cal­i­bre of stars that are lead­ing it.

On their web­site, Wattpad Stu­dios reads, ​“Wattpad has com­plete­ly trans­formed how the world dis­cov­ers, cre­ates, and engages with sto­ries.” The past decade of roman­tic film releas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly on stream­ing ser­vices, proves that this is a valid claim. But while it may feel like a recent phe­nom­e­non, per­haps we have been made sus­cep­ti­ble to fan­fic­tion films pre­vi­ous­ly with­out even real­is­ing it. Mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sics such as Clue­less (Emma by Jane Austen), 10 Things I Hate About You (The Tam­ing of the Shrew), and She’s The Man (Twelfth Night), could be viewed as AU fan­fic­tions: trans­port­ing estab­lished and well-loved nar­ra­tives into an Alter­nate Uni­verse, and see­ing how their sto­ry oper­ates in this new set­ting. The recent run-away suc­cess of Any­one But You, itself based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Noth­ing, demon­strates that this remains a suc­cess­ful for­mu­la with audiences.

On the small screen, tele­vi­sion series such as Smal­l­ville and Mer­lin, or even The Car­rie Diaries, showed us icon­ic char­ac­ters before they became the ver­sion of them that’s usu­al­ly depict­ed. Mean­while, the more loose book-to-screen adap­ta­tions could be rein­ter­pret­ed as ​‘fix-it’ fan­fic­tions, the screen­writ­ers chang­ing and remov­ing ele­ments of the source mate­r­i­al as they see fit.

There’s plen­ty to be said for the impact that Wattpad and oth­er fan­fic­tion sites have had on the pub­lish­ing indus­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to romance fic­tion, and in many ways, the prob­lems it has cre­at­ed are being mir­rored in the film indus­try – more movies with small­er bud­gets are being made, so low­er qual­i­ty is demand­ed from writ­ers; the mar­ket has become over­sat­u­rat­ed in the shift from cin­e­mas to stream­ing ser­vices as the pri­ma­ry mode of film release; there has become such a focus on IP, that orig­i­nal sto­ries get lost in the mix. How­ev­er, it also mir­rors the same ben­e­fits – new writ­ers from a range of back­grounds can be dis­cov­ered organ­i­cal­ly; it sat­is­fies fans of the orig­i­nal sto­ries and plays into nos­tal­gia; and it brings enter­tain­ment to main­stream audi­ences with­out tak­ing itself too seri­ous­ly as a genre.

The release of The Idea of You is cer­tain­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of a trend that has been steadi­ly build­ing. How­ev­er, between the explic­it ways in which it draws ref­er­ence to its inspi­ra­tions, and the pres­ence of Hathaway’s star pow­er, it also feels like a levelling-up.