If you’ve been paying attention to recent efforts from the major studios, you can notice a specific pattern in releases. There’s been great emphasis on big IP franchises, reboots, remakes, and sequels. The reason is simple: The studio owns the rights to a successful movie or franchise. The safest way to make even more money is to redo the formula that worked the first time around and take advantage of its fan base for an even greater profit. This is usually done under the guise of “pleasing the fans” and making films for the modern age. But despite record-high box office numbers in major productions costing hundreds of millions to make, there’s a vocal clamoring for a return to a familiar format.
Since the development of Hollywood as a cinematic powerhouse and the expansion of movies around the world, the romantic comedy genre (more commonly known as the romcom) has become a standard of mainstream cinema. In their prime, the movies could profit off of their modest budgets and become major hits. They were easy to market, lighthearted, and had a wide audience that would be willing to go to their local theaters to see it. But something changed.
Call it a change in societal norms, trends passing by, studio interference, or people just being tired of the genre. From making hundreds of millions at the box office (and on home video too), to Netflix originals that trend for a week before being forgotten with little fanfare. For a genre that once seemed like a safe bet for studios, it seems to have lost its touch. Or has it?
The roots of the romantic comedy can be traced back to the early screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s. The screwball comedy was a witty sub-genre of movies that combined fast-paced eccentric comedy with moments of romantic triumph following a long, bumpy road to get there. It often relied on improbable plots, slapstick exploits, and a cascading sequence of events that brought two people together – often in a farce. Films like It Happened One Night (1934) and His Girl Friday (1940) have become successful for their memorability and uncontrollable humor. These were comedies of manners that used their sophistication to tell jokes and absorb the audience in an engaging comedy. These movies slowly evolved into more conventional motion pictures that focused less on the slapstick and more on the inherent comedy that can be found within a relationship.
Though the films became more traditional, they still remained enormously popular amongst the movie-viewing public. Following the genre’s gradual shift over the next few decades, the Romcom had become more akin to the recognizable state most people remember. Meetcutes, bickering, conflict, and grand gestures that bring two people together in a story wrapped up by the time credits roll. When Harry Met Sally (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and many others had become pillars of the genre and defined the standards to which studios would hold future romcoms. The major success of these movies had only increased the amount distributed each year, with everyone trying to cash in on the craze.
By the time the 2000s rolled around, the genre was at the peak of popularity. Major Hollywood stars such as Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock, and Matthew McConaughey reached the public and elevated their stardom through their consistent work in the genre. The formula put in place had been working like gangbusters and the studios were raking in immense profit with mid-budget comedies.
But the success of the genre also led to its undeniable downfall. When a studio wants to be safe and make money hand over fist, they’ll get two attractive leads, put them in a generic romcom with a moderate budget, and wait for audiences to come running. These tried-and-true strategies became less effective over time, however, because of how redundant the genre had become. When there’s an oversaturation of something, audiences will grow tired, and demand the next thing. With budgets climbing and gross revenue growing more and more meager, the studios began prioritizing the romcom less.
As it turns out, it is much more profitable to focus all the studio’s money on promoting and developing a major sci-fi blockbuster rather than a few mid-budget movies that weren’t guaranteed to make money like they used to. The profit margins would indicate that romantic comedies still proved more promising than other genres, but that doesn’t include the millions in marketing spent to promote the movie. Moreover, many of its stars had left the genre entirely for more dramatic and buzzworthy roles, and considering how the main couple is the lynchpin of the movie, it was seemingly yet another nail in the coffin. This is not to say that Hollywood stopped making romcoms entirely—there were a plethora of rom-coms in the 2010s—but the issue was that they had slowly lost their initial relevance.
The reason for the romantic comedy’s popularity comes from the human desire to be loved—to be swept away in a romance in which the audience can imagine themselves. Romcoms are funny and fantastical but still relatable enough for people to connect with them. They offer people a glimpse into a world where true love triumphs over all odds and afford audiences an escape from their own reality. There is still a demand from those who remember the films to fill the market with enjoyable and well-made romcoms. There’s been a small resurgence with more studios putting out the occasional romcom with moderate success at the box office and much more notability on streaming. There remains a market for these movies and they can stand to make a profit, but that all depends on what the shareholders of studios are willing to risk.
