Another day, another millennial nostalgia-baiting sequel to a classic late 1990s or early 2000s movie. This year alone we’ve had The Devil Wears Prada 2 and – and now there are rumours of another afoot: over the last week, it was reported that the 2003 rom-com How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConnaughey, may well be returning to cinema screens for a part two.
In the original movie, Hudson plays Andie, a journalist writing an article about the most off-putting things women can do in relationships, while McConnaughey is Ben, an advertising exec who, for convoluted professional reasons, bets his colleagues that he can make any woman fall in love with him. Hijinks, as we know, very much ensue.
While the film received mixed reviews from critics upon release, it’s since earned its place in the rom-com pantheon – largely because of Hudson and McConnaughey’s irrepressible and electric chemistry, and so while nothing is confirmed yet, you’d hope that they’ll be back to reprise their roles. Otherwise, however, the slate is clean and anything is possible, so here are my suggestions and predictions. @Hollywood if you use any of my ideas, I will need two things only: a cheque and an invite to the Oscars one time only, just as I would really like to see what is in the goodie bag.
Andie has a podcast
Among people who write for work, it’s a long-running joke that if Carrie Bradshaw were starting her career in the 2020s, there’s absolutely no way that she would be able to sustain a living (let alone a Jimmy Choo habit) as a freelancer writing one column a week for one publication – make it three or four, plus a bit of copywriting work for a random eco-deodorant start-up, and then we might be getting somewhere. This changing media landscape is why she was given a podcast in (at least there’s YouTube ad revenue to be had there).
Like Carrie before her, then, I’d assume that by the late 2020s, Hudson’s Andie is probably also broadcasting to the world via the medium of podcast: at the end of How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, she’s intercepted by Ben on the way to a job interview in Washington DC. If I had to guess what happened next, I’d wager that she eventually got herself there, wowed the panel, was offered the role on the spot, rose through the ranks, and became a respected name in political journalism – only to be fired from her publication in a mass redundancy executed over video call in the mid-to-late-2010s, due to a company-wide pivot to video, described by the CEO as “unfortunate but necessary”. Of course she has a podcast.
There will be dating apps
Maybe Andie is single again (a will-they-won’t-they storyline before an inevitable reunion with Ben might be fun); maybe she’s writing an article coaching younger women through their own singledom, or there’s a daughter, niece or colleague in need of some assistance. Either way, I want to see some dating app commentary. I want ghosting, I want breadcrumbing, I want love-bombing, I want that thing where you arrange a drink with someone even though you really can’t be arsed and would rather be at home eating a posh lasagna ready meal for one (representation matters).
This is because I think we are yet to see a great dating app movie. Despite the fact that a lot of people do now actually meet their partners on these things, they don’t really get interrogated in movies much, instead used more as punchlines or underwhelming comparisons for the kinds of meet-cute that don’t actually happen as much in real life anymore (I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but it is, sadly, true). How to Meet a Guy in Ten Swipes? Needs work, I’ll admit, but hey, we’re workshopping here.
It’s a day ending in y!
Goldie Hawn plays Andie’s mom [This one is more just wishful thinking on my part but go with me]
In an ideal world for me personally this film is actually more of a x How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days crossover event, but in lieu of Hollywood executives actually listening to my incredible ideas, I’d take a scene where Goldie gives some sage advice to her on- and off-screen daughter, ideally while wearing a devastatingly well-cut, sharp-shouldered jacket, paired with the type of beautifully teased blow-dry I dream about regularly.
The message might not be what we expect
Obviously in a classic rom-com, boy meets girl, a spanner or seven gets chucked into the works, but they fall in love in the end. By 2026, however, women’s ideas about what happily ever after looks like have changed a bit: heterosexual love is just one road we might go down, so this sequel may well explore that, too. Perhaps Andie embraces a new side to her sexuality and becomes a glamorous lesbian, perhaps she decides she doesn’t need anyone at all and becomes a TikTok misandrist. Maybe someone’s polyamorous, I don’t know.
What I have observed in rom-com-style formats since How To Lose a Guy’s heyday, however – whether that’s books like Monica Heisey’s , or TV shows like – is that more and more, personal growth tends to be more of an important end goal than romantic love. Obviously I love a big snog and a song playing in a major key at the end of a movie as much as the next sap who’ll cry at anything, but I also like the idea that there’s more to life than that.
