The casting news for the Fake Skating movie adaptation just dropped, and Lynn Painter’s reaction on Instagram says everything. Amélie Hoeferle plays Dani, Graham Campbell plays Alec, and filming starts in Winnipeg this fall.
The movie adaptation is set to be released in theaters on July 16, 2027!
Sony Pictures and Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge Entertainment have tapped Hoeferle and Campbell to star in the film adaptation of Lynn Painter’s New York Times bestselling YA novel, with Josh Boone directing.
The casting announcement arrives just days after the film’s July 2027 theatrical release date was confirmed, and the speed at which this production is moving says everything about how seriously Sony is taking it.
Who Is Lynn Painter?
Lynn Painter is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of multiple novels for teens and adults, including Better Than the Movies, The Do-Over, The Love Wager, Betting on You, and Fake Skating.
Fake Skating has remained on the New York Times YA Hardcover Bestseller list every single week since its publication in September 2025 — a run that clearly caught Sony’s attention.
She has cited her husband as the inspiration for every love interest she has ever written, which is, honestly, the most romantic detail imaginable about a romance novelist.
What Is Fake Skating About?
Lynn Painter came up with the concept for Fake Skating after noticing a genuine gap in the market: there were essentially no hockey-centered romantic comedies set in high school.
To prepare for the novel, she traveled from Omaha to Minnesota to immerse herself in the hockey-focused culture she was building on the page. What started as a story about ice hockey and fake dating gradually became something more layered—a story about found families and finding one’s place in the world.
The film’s official description captures the central premise: an emotional high school hockey romance about childhood sweethearts whose icy reunion in their hockey-loving hometown unexpectedly thaws when they fake a romantic relationship.
Dani and Alec are not strangers pretending to be in love. They are childhood sweethearts performing a version of something that was once real, in the town where it happened, surrounded by people who remember who they used to be to each other.
She needs credibility for a Harvard application. He needs to impress NHL scouts. Two people who were once everything to each other, now using each other as a means to an end—slowly, inevitably, discovering that the feelings were never as finished as they thought.
Fake Skating Movie – The Cast:
Amélie Hoeferle, who plays Dani, is a German-American actress best known for her role in the Prime Video coming-of-age series Sterling Point, as well as The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Night Swim.
She brings the warmth and emotional specificity Dani needs: a girl navigating her parents’ divorce and an unexpected reunion with the childhood friend who went MIA on her, all while trying to hold her future together.
Graham Campbell, who plays Alec, gained significant attention in the Tony Award-winning play Appropriate opposite Sarah Paulson. He can currently be seen in FX’s The Shards and in Late Fame, a critically acclaimed film that premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was just released by Magnolia.
His combination of stage credibility and emerging screen presence makes him an intriguing choice for a character who has quietly grown from the nerdy, cozy kid Dani remembers into someone considerably more complicated.
Mark Duplass is also in talks to join the cast as Alec’s coach.
The Creative Team Sony Is Betting On
The studio fast-tracked the project after giving it the green light, moving ahead before casting was even confirmed.
Josh Boone directed The Fault in Our Stars in 2014, which became a box office smash on a summer release. Sources describe Fake Skating as the perfect summertime movie, especially since no films are currently slated for young women next summer.
Boone most recently directed Regretting You, the Colleen Hoover adaptation starring McKenna Grace and Mason Thames for Paramount. Morgan Lehmann and Victoria Bata penned the first draft of the screenplay, with Boone and his writing partner Knate Lee handling revisions.
Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge Entertainment produces alongside Jacqueline Monetta. Madison Jones executive produces on behalf of Olive Bridge. Painter herself serves as executive producer, ensuring the story she traveled to Minnesota to research stays true to the world she built.
Fake Skating Movie Releases in July 2027!
Filming is already underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba this fall. This means Dani and Alec’s reunion is actively being built on screen right now, in a hockey town, in the cold, exactly as it should be.
With Hoeferle and Campbell bringing these two characters to life, Boone’s track record of turning emotionally resonant YA into genuine box office events, and Sony’s confidence evident in the speed of this entire production, July 16, 2027 is already a date worth marking.
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