Ali Hazelwood is having an absolutely extraordinary year in 2026.
The Love Hypothesis hits Prime Video on September 23; Deep End is in development at Netflix; And now, Amazon MGM has just announced that Love, Theoretically, which is arguably her most nuanced novel, is getting the movie treatment too, with a dream team attached that should have every Hazelwood fan completely losing it.
Amazon MGM Studios has landed the film rights to Ali Hazelwood’s novel Love, Theoretically, with It Ends With Us author Colleen Hoover producing alongside her Heartbones Entertainment partner Lauren Levine, and filmmaker Sofia Alvarez—of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before fame—set to direct and adapt the screenplay.
Magic Hour Entertainment’s Max Siemers and Tanner Anderson are also producing, with Alvarez and Hazelwood both serving as executive producers. The production company announcement captured the mood perfectly:
“The excitement we have for LOVE, THEORETICALLY is not at all theoretical! We’re incredibly grateful to partner with Amazon MGM Studios and to work again with the brilliant Sofia Alvarez. It’s a privilege and joy to continue to collaborate with Lauren Levine and Colleen Hoover at Heartbones. Most of all, the film we hope you’ll fall in love with exists because of the immense talent and imagination of Ali Hazelwood.”
What Is Love, Theoretically?
The official description of the novel is the best introduction:
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her nonexistent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig, until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.
The hook of Love, Theoretically is genuinely clever because it takes the fake dating trope and flips it inside out. Elsie isn’t fake-dating Jack. She’s fake-dating his brother, professionally, for money, while falling for Jack against every better instinct she has.
The fake girlfriend gig and the enemies-to-lovers storyline collide in ways that feel fresh and specific to Hazelwood’s academic world.
One reviewer described the reading experience with the kind of honesty that makes you want to pick the book up immediately: “I was in probably the biggest reading slump I’ve ever experienced when I picked up Love Theoretically, but I devoured this book.”
Why This Team Is So Exciting?
The combination of Colleen Hoover producing and Sofia Alvarez directing is impressive on paper, and it makes real creative sense for this particular story.
Hoover’s Heartbones Entertainment has been building a genuinely impressive track record. The company’s debut feature, Reminders of Him, played in theaters in March via Universal and made $89 million worldwide on a $25 million production cost.
They also have Verity arriving in theaters on October 2, starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett. Heartbones is not a vanity production label. It is a company that clearly understands how to turn emotionally resonant women’s fiction into commercial success.
Sofia Alvarez is the choice that really excites me, though.
She wrote To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and To All the Boys 2: P.S. I Still Love You—two of the most charming and tonally precise romantic comedies in recent Netflix history.
She knows exactly how to take a beloved YA or adult romance novel and translate its specific emotional language into something that works on screen without flattening it.
No cast has been announced, and no release date is set. The project is in development, with Alvarez working on the screenplay adaptation.
Two Physicists, One Lab, Zero Excuses Not to Read
Love, Theoretically is on shelves now, and with The Love Hypothesis arriving on Prime Video next month, this is absolutely the moment to read it.
Go with The Love Hypothesis first if you haven’t yet, because it’s the viral book that started it all.
Then move straight into Love, Theoretically. Elsie and Jack’s dynamic is sharper, the stakes are higher, and Elsie’s personal journey is about learning to be herself rather than perform a version of herself for whoever needs her.
By the time Sofia Alvarez has cast her Elsie and her Jack and the first trailer drops, you’ll already know exactly what you want from this film.
And I kid you not, you’ll wanna have very strong opinions about whether they got it right.
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