Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis has broken the internet too many times to count. This year, it’s due to her highly anticipated film adaptation of the novel.
The Love Hypothesis is the newest rom-com to hit Amazon Prime. The film follows Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart), a quirky Biology Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University who suddenly finds herself fake dating “Dr. Evil,” also known as Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), the department’s brooding postdoc. Despite the film’s popularity, its background remains relatively niche. Understanding its origins will help new fans understand subtle references and what the adaptation means for the new age of fan culture.
Let’s take it all the way back to the beginning. The year was 2017, and The Last Jedi, the second film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, had just been released. The movie follows two main characters, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey Skywalker (Daisy Ridley), who are fighting on opposite sides of an intergalactic war between the First Order and the Resistance. As an 11-year-old in the theater almost 10 years ago now, I can still remember the chemistry between the two characters.Â
At the same time I was experiencing their potential, fanfiction writers were already getting to work, including Ali Hazelwood. “Head Over Feet” first debuted on popular fan fiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) in 2018. Only three years later, it was published as a traditional novel by Berkley Books. Hitting shelves in 2021, it was the perfect timing for it to become an immediate success in the emerging BookTok community, marking Ali Hazelwood’s first big break and paving the way for a new generation of enemies-to-lovers fans.
Regardless of changing the characters’ names to Olive and Adam, the film adaptation and the Star Wars sequel trilogy are inexorably intertwined. The adaptation is littered with references and is much more enjoyable when you have the background of the trilogy to understand the Easter eggs and character interactions. The most prominent connection is the contrast between Adam’s ruthless commitment to his lab and Olive’s enthusiasm and loyalty, which matches the exact dynamic of Kylo Ren and Rey.Â
The mere creation and popularity of The Love Hypothesis adaptation demonstrate the growing influence of fan culture and the power of fanfiction sites such as AO3. BookTok has become an especially authoritative venue for books to make it to the big screen. Within a few years of their success, many books are picked up by production companies banking on an established fan base to generate their revenue. But, taking The Love Hypothesis as an example, it’s not a bad strategy.
Ali Hazelwood is gearing up to break the internet again in February 2027 with a sequel to The Love Hypothesis called The Two-Body Problem. In the meantime, I highly recommend her other works, including Love, Theoretically, Problematic Summer Romance, and Deep End. It’s unlikely that Ali Hazelwood will stop making hits anytime soon. And I can’t say I’m mad about it!