How Harry Styles fan fiction inspired modern day romcoms – from steamy sagas to Anne Hathaway’s new movie

He’s a pop star with several high-profile acting roles to his name, but Harry Styles is impacting the film world in more ways than one.

Fan fiction based on the pop star and his former bandmates in One Direction is being made into a movie, with fans convinced the stories have inspired a long line of rom-coms.

Anna Todd’s New York Times bestselling After series, based on One Direction, has been adapted into five feature films released between April 2019 and September 2023.

The latest addition of After Everything – which grossed $10.6 million in box office sales after its limited theatrical release on September 13 – proves the phenomenal power behind the Harry Styles and 1D fanbase.

Meanwhile, fans are convinced – despite denials by the author of the book on which it is based – that Anne Hathaway’s upcoming film, The Idea of ​​You, is about a 40-year-old single mother who falls in love with a younger man who is the singer is under a spell, also inspired by Harry Styles.

The After series began in 2013, when superfan Anna Todd, 34, from Ohio, wrote an 80-chapter book on the social writing app Wattpad.

The young adult novel is based on Tessa, a college freshman from Washington State, who falls in love with a punk “Harry Styles,” with the two ending up in a tumultuous relationship.

In the original chapters – which can still be read on Wattpad – the real names of Harry, Liam, Zayn, Louis and Niall are used for the characters.

However, for legal reasons the names had to be changed when the stories were published, and so the main character was changed from Harry to Hardin.

Within a month of publishing the content online, the story was viewed 544 million times.

By 2014, author Todd had signed an official publishing deal with Simon & Schuster, and the novels were released later that year.

Paramount Pictures spied the opportunity to expand on its rising popularity and acquired the screen rights in October 2014 to produce a film adaptation of the first novel After.

It all started in 2013, when superfan Anna Todd (pictured), 34, from Ohio, US, wrote an 80-chapter book on social writing app Wattpad.

The young adult novel is based on a college freshman from Washington state named Tessa who falls in love with a punk “Harry Styles,” with the two ending up in a tumultuous relationship.

After was released on April 12, 2019, starring Josephine Langford as Tessa Young and Hero Fiennes Tiffin (pictured) as Hardin Scott, with four subsequent films adapted soon after.

After four years of production, After was finally released on April 12, 2019, starring Josephine Langford as Tessa Young and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Hardin Scott.

Due to the film’s commercial success – having raked in some $30 million in box office sales worldwide – a sequel was planned with the cast of Tiffin and Langford reprising their roles as Tessa and Hardin.

After We Collided was released in September 2020, with the success of the sequel leading to all the books being turned into feature films, again starring Tiffin and Langford.

After We Fell was released in 2021, followed by After Ever Happy in 2022 and the final part of After Everything in September 2023.

In May 2022, Harry Styles himself was interviewed on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Showin which the Watermelon Sugar crooner was asked if the series was based on him.

In a rather awkward response, Styles said, “I don’t know how much… I don’t know. I do not really know.’

He added: ‘I don’t know if I can confirm it. I’m not entirely aware of the origins of the script or anything… I’ve heard of it, yes. But I don’t know in terms of…I’m not really sure.”

Fast forward to 2024: A romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine called The Idea of ​​You will be released in May.

After taking her daughter to Coachella, Sophie, 40, meets Hayes Campbell, the 24-year-old lead singer of a boy band called August Moon – and the pair begin a passionate affair.

The Amazon-produced film is based on Robinne Lee’s novel of the same name and focuses on Sophie, a 40-year-old single mother whose husband left her for a younger woman.

After taking her daughter to Coachella, she meets Hayes Campbell, the 24-year-old lead singer of a boy band called August Moon. The pair begin a passionate affair, but discover they must navigate the realities of their very different lives.

It’s no secret that Style’s dating history includes relationships with women several years older than himself, such as with Olivia Wilde, who was 36 when Styles was 26, and Caroline Flack, who was 32 when she dated the then 17-year-old Styles. .

However, author Lee denies that her book is based on the As It Was singer Fashion in 2020: ‘This was never supposed to be a book about Harry Styles, nor was it ever intended to be a classic, vague romance.

She added: “It was supposed to be a story about a woman approaching her 40s reclaiming her sexuality and rediscovering herself, just at the point where society traditionally writes off women as desirable, viable and whole.”