If there’s one thing the movie world has been missing in recent years, it’s a good rom-com. Despite many failed attempts at modernising the genre, its golden era of the ‘90s and early aughts, with films such as Love Actually, Bridget Jones, Pretty Woman and Notting Hill, still reign supreme. But if anyone knows their way around a good rom-com, it’s Julia Roberts, the pretty woman in Pretty Woman and the A-list actress that woos Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, who’s signed on for her first role in one in over two decades.
Not only does the upcoming film Ticket to Paradise star Roberts, but she’s joined by her friend and fellow acting veteran George Clooney, as well as a younger cast made up of Emily in Paris hottie star Lucas Bravo and Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever and Billie Lourd.
According to Deadline, the focus of the movie is divorced couple Clooney and Roberts, who “team up and travel to Bali to stop their daughter making the same mistake they made 25 years ago”. That mistake? Getting married.
Bravo’s role on the project hasn’t been announced, but it looks likely he’s the hopeful groom-to-be to Dever, who plays Roberts and Clooney’s young daughter.
Though the film is set in Bali, it was actually filmed in the Whitsundays in Queensland, meaning, yes, Bravo’s been Down Under recently.
As for Roberts’ much-awaited return to rom-coms, the actress says she hadn’t said yes to a script in 20 years simply because there weren’t any good ones. “People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one,” she told the New York Times.
“If I had read something that I thought was that Notting Hill level of writing or My Best Friend’s Wedding level of madcap fun, I would do it. They didn’t exist until this movie that I just did that Ol Parker wrote and directed,” she added. “Lo and behold, George felt it only worked with me,” Roberts said. “Somehow we were both able to do it, and off we went.”
