NEED TO KNOW
Emily Henry’s beloved romance characters are finally jumping off the page and onto the screen.
On Tuesday, Sept. 30, Netflix released the first teaser trailer for the adaptation of Henry’s 2021 novel People We Meet on Vacation, which stars Emily Bader (My Lady Jane) and Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) as best friends Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsson.
People We Meet on Vacation follows Poppy, a travel writer for a fictional New York City magazine, and Alex, an English teacher, as they grow a firm friendship during college despite conflicting personalities and take annual vacations around the country and the globe over a span of 10 years.
Netflix/YouTube
In the new trailer, Alex catches Poppy singing along to Robyn’s “Hang with Me” at the airport when her luggage arrives.
“Hi Alex, I was not expecting to see you. My bag came out first and that never happens,” she says, caught off guard.
And when asked to define their relationship, Poppy calls her and Alex “just friends,” before adding, “platonic travel companions.”
Netflix/YouTube
Poppy, dissatisfied with life multiple years after her friendship with Alex soured after their last trip together, invites him for one final vacation in a last-ditch effort to rekindle their friendship and find romance along the way.
Courtesy of Netflix
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Reads a logline, “Free-spirited Poppy and routine-loving Alex have been unlikely best friends for a decade, living in different cities but spending every summer vacation together. The careful balance of their friendship is put to the test when they begin to question what has been obvious to everyone else — could they actually be the perfect romantic match?”
As Bader told Netflix’s Tudum, People We Meet on Vacation is “quite a simple slice-of-life story about two people just being able to love themselves and therefore love each other.”
Netflix released its first teaser of the movie on Instagram July 1, as audiences heard Bader and Blyth speak in character as Poppy and Alex for the first time in a voiceover with footage of waves crashing against a rock.
For Blyth, “The clue is in the name,” he told Tudum of one big reason the project appealed to him. “It’s People We Meet on Vacation, and we have gotten to do that tenfold.”
Michele K. Short/Netflix
People We Meet on Vacation helped propel Henry, 34, to the center of a modern-day renaissance moment for romance literature. Four of her other novels, including Book Lovers, Beach Read, Happy Place and Funny Story, are also receiving screen treatments.
The movie adaptation of People We Meet on Vacation is directed by Brett Haley, with a screenplay by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo.
Haley told Tudum, “This is a movie that doesn’t just tell a love story. It makes you feel like you’ve gone on vacation right alongside Poppy and Alex.”
Sarah Catherine Hook, Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount, Lukas Gage, Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon will also costar with Bader and Blyth.
People We Meet on Vacation is on Netflix Jan. 9.
