Netflix Developing Horror-Inspired Sequel to Rom-Com Isn’t It Romantic

The movie will be a meta-commentary on horror tropes. Look Both Ways writer April Prosser is attached.

New Line Cinema is following up its 2019 hit Isn’t It Romantic with a horror-themed follow up titled Isn’t It Scary. The movie, like Rebel Wilson’s Isn’t It Romantic, will reportedly be a meta-commentary on horror tropes — something that will give it a bit more competition than Romantic had, given that meta-horror is already a pretty crowded field ever since Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and the first Scream popularized it. According to Deadline, who first reported the movie, April Prosser (Look Both Ways) will write the script for Isn’t It Scary. Prosser’s Look  Both Ways, a popular Netflix romantic comedy starring Riverdale‘s Lili Reinhart, makes her a pretty obvious choice for this project. 

Producers will include Todd Garner for Broken Road Productions and Little Engine Entertaniment’s Gina Matthews and Grant Scharbo. Nobody else is attached yet, and per the Deadline story, even the known participants don’t yet have a finalized contract in place.

Isn’t It Romantic, which also starred Liam Hemsworth, Adam DeVine, Priyanka Chopra, and Brandon Scott Jones, earned $49 million at the worldwide box office against a reported $30 million budget. In the film, per its official synopsis, “Natalie is a New York architect who works hard to get noticed at her job, but is more likely to deliver coffee and bagels than design the city’s next skyscraper. Things go from bad to weird when she gets knocked unconscious during a subway mugging and magically wakes up to find herself in an alternate universe. Always cynical about love, Natalie’s worst nightmare soon comes true when she suddenly discovers that she’s playing the leading lady in a real-life romantic comedy.” The movie currently streams on Hulu.

On the success of Look Both Ways, Prosser earned gigs writing The Rewind for Netflix and The Art of French Kissing and Plus One for Amazon. Her long career has seen her work for about half the studios in Hollywood, and also at Warner Bros. Animation.

Garner, Mathews and Sharbo are currently working on What Kids Want, a follow-up to the many-years-apart What Women Want and What Men Want, for Paramount.

There’s no target date for the movie yet.