Screenwriting : Where ARE Our Great Romantic Comedies? by Carl Hippensteel

The thing about marketing a romantic comedy......the audience for a romantic comedy is so niche-driven......from an ethnic standpoint, from an age standpoint, from a religious standpoint, and from a sexual orientation standpoint...it makes it almost impossible for a major studio to invest in them. Romantic comedies are best suited for niche audiences now. I mean....if the romantic comedy had two twenty-something leads who were Hispanic and Catholic.....that's probably the audience. Or if it had two Asian transexuals. Why would people aged 18-35 want to go see a romantic comedy about two senior citizens? Etc...etc....etc. It's a political decision....ultimately....when it comes to movie-goers and the choice of films that they see. Romantic comedies are about as niche-driven as they come.

Great point, Bill.

Thanks for sharing this, Carl. I'm not the first one to buy a movie ticket for a rom-com, but after reading this, definitely have more of an appreciation for the genre.

I think the issue is that rom-coms are expected to be more COM than ROM, but the comedy field is so competitive now that rom-coms just sort of become a comedy with a romantic subplot.

There were actually 8...yes 8 Back To The Future Scripts...not only the 3 which were filmed...but 8 which was just a jumble of mishmash well into number 5...so it's not hard to imagine 1400 page script for a film like Star Trek and it's spin off's

Good article. When I come to think of it, I haven't really seen a romantic comedy in theaters since Letters to Juliet in 2010.