“The Idea of You” release date, cast and trailer: Is Anne Hathaway’s new rom-com based on Harry Styles?

Feel as if you’ve already heard the one about the tattooed lead singer of a five-piece boyband who has a thing for older women? Even if you have, it might still be worth checking out “The Idea of You,” Anne Hathaway’s new rom-com which is not about former One Direction star Harry Styles. Not really, at least.

What is the plot of Hathaway’s “The Idea of You”?

Directed by Michael Showalter, the movie is based on the book of the same name, written in 2017 by Robinne Lee, who had roles in two films in the “Fifty Shade” series. “The Idea of You” premiered as the closing film of South by Southwest festival in March and will be released exclusively on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday 2 May.

It tells the story of divorced single mother Solène (Hathaway), an art gallery owner, who goes to Coachella and meets Hayes (played by English actor Nicholas Galitzine), the frontman of said boy band. Despite the 16-year age gap, the pair embark on an unlikely whirlwind romance over the number of months, which sees her travelling to meet up with him all over the globe while he is on tour.

The plot has led to suggestions that the movie is, in fact, some form of Harry Styles fan fiction, an idea boosted for many by Galitzine’s English accent and body ink. When the One Direction singer was 17, he dated television presenter Caroline Flack, who was 14 years his senior, and he also had a two-year relationship with Olivia Wilde, who is almost 10 years older.

Author Robinne Lee plays down Harry Styles fan fiction suggestions

Lee has addressed the supposed similarities between her lead male and Styles on a number of occasions and revealed that while she did may have based Hayes on certain elements of the One Direction singer, a number of different men had inspired the shaping of the character, including Prince Harry, actor Eddie Redmayne, her husband and former boyfriends.

In any case, Solène is intended to be the main protagonist, as the casting of A-lister Hathaway suggests.

Rom-com “challenges certain myths about women”

“I wanted to write a novel that challenged certain myths: that female sexuality ceases to exist after we hit middle-age; that having kids makes us no longer sexually attractive or viable; that women at a certain point in their lives—the point where they should be at their strongest and most prolific—become invisible,” Lee said in an interview in the year in which the book was released.

“This was never supposed to be a book about Harry Styles,” the author then revealed to Vogue in 2020. “It was supposed to be a story about a woman approaching 40 and reclaiming her sexuality and rediscovering herself, just at the point that society traditionally writes women off as desirable and viable and whole.”

Lee has, however, commented on just how often she is asked the question about the singer, jokingly posting on social media in 2019: “I Wrote a Book and Harry Styles Made All the Money: a Memoir.”