Latest news with #ArchiveofOurOwn
Express Tribune
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Daisy Ridley reacts to husband Tom Bateman's casting in Love Hypothesis fanfiction movie based on her Star Wars role
Daisy Ridley has shared her surprise and amusement over her husband Tom Bateman's recent casting in The Love Hypothesis, a film adaptation based on a novel that originally started as Star Wars fan fiction. The twist? The original story was inspired by Ridley's own Star Wars character, Rey, and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren. Ridley reacted with a playful Instagram Story a screenshot of an article about Bateman's casting. Fans were quick to call it a 'full circle moment,' noting the irony of Bateman now playing a character inspired by Ridley's on-screen romance with Driver. One fan wrote on X (formerly Twitter): 'Tom Bateman playing a Kylo Ren-coded character written in a Reylo fanfic is something out of a multiverse.' Interestingly, the film's origin adds another layer of irony. The novel The Love Hypothesis was initially written as a Reylo fanfic on Archive of Our Own before author Ali Hazelwood reworked it into an original romance novel, changing the names but keeping the characters' essence. Now, with a major film adaptation in the works, the story is coming full circle in Hollywood. Fans online have been celebrating the moment. 'The Reylo cinematic universe is stronger than ever,' joked one Reddit user, while another added, 'Imagine explaining this to someone who's never been on Tumblr.' Some joked that having Bateman in the role is nearly as meta as if Adam Driver himself had taken the part. Ridley and Bateman, who met while filming Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, quietly tied the knot in 2023. This unexpected connection between their careers has now sparked excitement and nostalgia among Star Wars and romance fans alike.
Express Tribune
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Tom Bateman cast as male lead in 'The Love Hypothesis' movie opposite Lili Reinhart
Tom Bateman has been cast as the male lead in The Love Hypothesis, the upcoming Amazon MGM Studios film adaptation of Ali Hazelwood's best-selling romance novel. The casting has caught attention for a surprising real-life link to the book's fanfiction origins: Bateman is married to Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley, the original inspiration behind the female protagonist. The book began as a Star Wars fanfiction titled Head Over Feet, which centred on the Reylo pairing—Ridley's Rey and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren. Published in 2018 on Archive of Our Own, the story was later reworked into a standalone romance. Hazelwood confirmed Adam Carlsen, the male lead Bateman will play, was named in homage to Adam Driver. Nods to the book's origins came fast after Bateman's casting. Amazon MGM posted, 'Hypothesis: Tom Bateman is the perfect Adam Carlsen,' while fans lit up X with commentary linking the real-life couple to their fictional counterparts. One post read, 'Fanfiction version of Daisy Ridley's space husband being her real-life husband.' Bateman will star opposite Lili Reinhart, who plays Olive Smith, a PhD candidate who enters a fake dating scenario with Carlsen. The couple's chemistry mirrors that of Rey and Kylo's fraught alliance in The Rise of Skywalker. Bateman and Ridley met in 2017 during filming of Murder on the Orient Express. Their off-screen connection now circles back to a fandom that's followed them for years—only this time, on a very different kind of screen.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Daisy Ridley's husband Tom Bateman cast as lead in 'The Love Hypothesis' adaptation
Tom Bateman's new gig is a coincidence of galactic proportions. Bateman, who is married to "Star Wars" actress Daisy Ridley, has been cast in the upcoming film "The Love Hypothesis," Amazon MGM Studios announced on social media July 17. The movie serves as an adaptation of the New York Times bestselling romance novel — and former "Star Wars" fanfiction — by Ali Hazelwood. "Hypothesis: Tom Bateman is the perfect Adam Carlsen," Amazon MGM Studios wrote alongside the casting announcement. Bateman is set to play Adam Carlsen, a professor who finds himself in a whirlwind fake relationship with PhD candidate Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart) as Smith tries to convince her friend that her love life is going well. Eagle-eyed "Star Wars" fans will be quick to clock the irony of Bateman's involvement in the film, as Ridley's "Star Wars" character Rey (introduced in 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens") was a chief inspiration for the early stages of "The Love Hypothesis" novel. Bateman and Ridley met in 2017 while filming the crime drama remake "Murder on the Orient Express." What is the connection between 'The Love Hypothesis' and 'Star Wars'? Hazelwood's first incarnation of "The Love Hypothesis," titled "Head Over Feet," was published online in 2018 as a "Star Wars" fanfiction that centered on the relationship between Ridley's character Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), which has been given the nickname "Reylo." In the original "Star Wars" universe, Rey and Kylo are enemies who later discover they share a powerful connection called a "force dyad," which inspires Kylo to come to Rey's aid in battle in the 2019 film "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." Hazelwood was discovered by her literary agent thanks to self-publishing the fanfiction on the content-sharing platform Archive of Our Own, aka A03, the author told Collider in a 2021 interview. "Head Over Feet" was subsequently reworked into a non-"Star Wars" story, although Adam Carlsen's name is a nod to Driver and his portrayal of Kylo. "Traditional publishing is getting more and more interested in fanfiction and in embracing it," Hazelwood told the outlet. "And maybe they're doing well because of money and marketing and stuff like that, but I'm just really happy that this is happening and that fanfiction is gaining legitimacy because it always had legitimacy." Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie, TV recommendations right in your inbox Fans praise 'genius' casting of Tom Bateman in 'The Love Hypothesis' movie Following the announcement of Bateman's "Love Hypothesis" casting, fans took to social media to share their shock and enthusiasm for the "Star Wars" connection. "Fanfiction version of (Daisy Ridley's) space husband being her real-life husband. Amazon MGM, I was not familiar with your game," @amber_amberson wrote on X. "Tom Bateman, who is actually Daisy Ridley's husband, starring in a book that was based off a Reylo fanfic of a film his wife is a part of?!?!?" @koredakota wrote. "YEAH, THEY ATE WITH THIS CASTING." More casting news: 'The Legend of Zelda' live-action movie finds its Link and Zelda "How do we explain to locals that Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley, (who) plays Rey, the inspiration behind Olive and The Love Hypothesis fanfic," @enemieslovrs wrote. "Tom Bateman playing Adam in The Love Hypothesis movie, oh this is genius," @edenhowlsz wrote. "Whoever planned this needs a raise." "What if they create a random female character just so they could have Daisy in the movie," @agentdaisyskye jokingly suggested. "I won't be against it, and it'll also be so funny."
Indian Express
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Desire, dissent, and the female gaze: Why women write so much fanfiction
When I was 11, I found the 'cool kids' in my bus discussing their favourite theories on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the way back from school. Desperate to join their conversation, I borrowed the first Harry Potter book from the library — unaware that it would change the course of my life. Over the next few years, I would read the series again and again and again. I would become what they call 'a fangirl', and I would wear the badge with pride. At the time, I was going through puberty in an all-girls school, and I knew I must pick a fictional man to fall in love with soon. I picked Ron Weasley (I was 'not like other girls', clearly). And I got to work, scouring the internet so I could learn everything about this Great Love Of My Life™. Inevitably, one day, I wound up on and read a fanfic where Ron and Hermione do more than kiss— gasp! (The kids would call this 'a canon event'.) Naturally, my brain exploded. I had discovered something rather magical. A sprawling, underground library full of stories where anything could happen. My favourite characters could slip off their narrative leashes and be free. They could fall in love with someone else, rewrite their endings or just have really graphic sex in the restricted section of the library, and no one would bat an eye. But the real kicker: not only could I read these stories… I could write them. I could take these characters, so beloved and so familiar, and use them as puppets — my puppets. (When it comes to teenage girls, give them the chance to play God and trust me, they will run with it.) At 22, I found myself studying 'Fandom Studies' as part of my college degree (yes, that's a real area of study — God bless English Lit). Reading what the scholars have to say on the subject compelled me to revisit my own childhood in an attempt to understand why fanfiction meant so much to me. Was it just because it ushered in my sexual awakening? Or did it also lay the foundation for me to become a writer? My boyfriend at the time had never read fanfiction and didn't get its appeal. This got me thinking — was there something specific about being a woman that made fanfiction so compelling to me? Turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. From the female lens Women drastically dominate fanfiction. More than 80% of people who read and write fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), the most popular fanfiction site, are women. In fact, more of its users identified as genderqueer (6%) than as male (4%). Why is that? For one, some scholars speculate that women are more inclined to write for free. Since fanfiction violates copyright by reimagining others' intellectual property, hosting platforms prevent writers from receiving any monetary compensation. Most AO3 authors are okay with that and take pride in being a part of the platform's anti-capitalist 'gift economy' based on exchange and collaboration. Men, however, are not likely to write for free, suggests American author Camille Bacon-Smith. Women, on the other hand, already engage in several acts of unpaid labour and can perhaps see the value of such writing. Historically, 'anonymous' has always been a woman. Even literary icons like Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelly published their early novels anonymously or under the mere title of 'lady'. While things changed for the better over time, books written by women are still priced lower than those written by men, a 2018 study found. It also noted, 'the more female a genre, the cheaper the books.' In this context, one can fairly assume that the genre with the least monetary value (fanfiction) should come to be the most female-dominated of them all. A place to rewrite rules Women may also take to fanfiction because it's inherently transgressive. Popular media is often from the male perspective — written, directed or produced by men. The transformative nature of fanfiction provides a means to subvert dominant cultural narratives as well as patriarchal or heteronormative ideas within media. Captain America and Bucky can be #couplegoals, Hermione Granger can be black, and your favourite member of One Direction can be in a wheelchair. Despite being a straight cis-het woman myself, I have found myself reading lots of slash fanfiction (stories of romance/sex featuring two characters of the same gender, typically straight, typically male). This baffled me till I read what Mel Stanfill, one of the researchers behind the 2022 AO3 survey, told Refinery29: 'Slash allows women to explore sexuality without the baggage of identification and the gender norms they are subjected to in real life'. The act of reimagining familiar stories invites alteration of not just gender roles, but also those of race, power and reality itself. For women and other marginalised groups, the freedom to craft a story on their own terms, without commercial barriers and away from scrutiny and judgement, is a kind of escapism they would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Owning desire Another popular idea is that fanfiction is just 'porn' for women. To be fair, while not all fanfiction contains romance or erotica, a lot of it does. The same things have been said (usually by a man, accompanied by a scoff and a smirk) about the modern BookTok romance novel. However, the idea of some kind of 'porn for women' is not just brilliant, but also important. And it's been around for ages (think — Mills & Boon). In a world where female desire has been routinely either erased or presented as 'forbidden' (even in its most straight-cis-vanilla-hetero-'normal'-form), fanfiction is where these desires (however kinky) can go to breathe. This is perhaps why some of the most successful fanfictions on the internet are not just based on romance but on sex. Psychologist Leon F Seltzer has written how men are hard-wired to receive visual cues as sexual impulses, but most women are not. Women require stimulation in the mind to become aroused. 'If there's such a thing as porn for women, it's the romance novel,' he wrote in a 2012 article. Dr Helen Wyatt, a sex therapist, notes how, for women, getting into a state of arousal means first feeling safe. Mainstream porn, which centres heavily around the male gaze, can be jarring or even disturbing to watch. In contrast, the gradual lead-up to sex in most erotic fiction, combined with the personal investment readers have in characters, helps them feel safe and therefore uninhibited. In fanfiction, the world, the backstory and most importantly, the characters are already achingly familiar. And it is therefore one of the safest places to explore desire. Women read and write fanfiction for a variety of different reasons. Many, like me, found themselves entrenched in a fandom, hungry for more material. Many others have used it as a space for escapism, dissent, power, sexual release or a combination of all these things. It can be collaborative or it can be anonymous — you get to choose. It is vast and nebulous and uncensored. There's no one to watch, judge, or police you. But the magic of it boils down to that feeling I had when I was 13, reading my first bit of Romione (that's Ron + Hermione, for the uninitiated) smut — the feeling of entering a text, deconstructing it and making it my own, dabbling in a world of infinite narrative possibility. A world with no rules, except the ones you decide should exist.
