Big news for beach readers and fans of Beach Read: The “EmHen” book universe is coming to screens big and small. Emily Henry’s empowering love stories have topped the fiction best-seller charts since 2020, thanks to their bright covers, relatable characters, and sparkling storytelling. A few weeks ago, it was announced four of those New York Times bestselling novels will be turned into movies, while a fifth, Happy Place, will be a TV series. On top of that, casting was just announced for the Netflix film based on People We Meet on Vacation. Here’s who’s playing Alex and Poppy, and everything else you need to know about the upcoming adaptations.
RELATED: 25 Romance Books to Take to the Beach This Summer.
Emily Bader and Tom Blyth will star in People We Meet on Vacation.
People We Meet on Vacation follows Poppy and Alex, who reconnect every summer for a weeklong vacation despite their busy lives and evolving relationships. The Internet fan-cast Ayo Edebiri and Paul Mescal as the leads. Instead, they will get, in the words of one Instagram commenter, President Snow and Lady Jane.
Emily Bader (star of the Amazon Prime hit series Lady Jane) and Tom Blyth (star of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) will star. Netflix released a video to announce the big news.
“Do you want to be our Poppy Wright?” asks director Brett Haley in the reveal clip of a video call, as Bader is taken aback in surprise. “You’re lying!” she says, shaking with joy. “Stop. Wait, I'm getting overwhelmed. Are you serious?... Are you kidding? I'm going to cry.”
The director then introduces his Alex Nilsen, Blyth, who has a big grin. Then Haley surprises both stars with “Emily Henry herself.”
“I'm so, so excited you guys,” says Henry, popping on. “I have been kind of an anxious wreck about who would play these characters, and I just truly could not feel any more confident that my readers and then so many more people who don't even know about the book are going to completely fall in love with Poppy and Alex, with you guys playing them.”
“It's like a dream come true. We’ll do you proud,” says Bader. “Let’s go!” says Blyth.
Expect the film to debut in 2025.
Vacation and Beach Read will be written by Yulin Kuang, herself a romance novelist.
BerkleyYulin Kuang will write People We Meet on Vacation, and also penned the adaptation of Beach Read, which tells the story of two rival authors who unexpectedly find themselves living next door to each other for the summer and decide to swap genres for a writing challenge.
The screenwriter knows something about romances. Her own best-selling debut novel, How to End a Love Story, was Reese Witherspoon’s May ‘24 Book Club Pick.
“I never had a chance to organically discover Emily Henry,” she told Vogue recently. “The People We Meet on Vacation manuscript landed in my inbox before it was published, and I think that was in 2021. The things I was reading at the time for pleasure were all historical, but when I got Emily’s book it had all of that DNA that I love from romance novels. It also had more locations than a James Bond movie, so that was also kind of a fun, compelling puzzle. I was like, okay, this is a beautiful book. It has so many emotionally resonant things, and also I can see how it would be difficult to adapt. But that made me more intrigued—I like a challenge.”
No casting has been announced for Beach Read—yet.
Book Lovers is being developed as a feature film.
BerkleyModern Love and Girls writer Sarah Heyward is scheduled to adapt the film version of 2022's Book Lovers, which follows two literary agents who find themselves stuck together in a small town and must navigate their professional rivalry and undeniable chemistry.
TikTokers have fancast Simone Ashley and Henry Golding, or Colin Woodell and Erin Moriarty, but no official announcement has been made yet. Look for this one at the end of 2025 if we’re lucky.
Happy Place is produced by J. Lo.
Berkley/ShutterstockChris Evans and Ella Purnell? Or Dakota Johnson and Alex Pettyfer? Who could play the estranged couple who pretend to be together for a week-long vacation with friends? TikTok fans have their own ideas about casting for Happy Place, but so far, all we know about this is that it’ll be a Netflix show produced by Jennifer Lopez’s production company, Nuyorican Productions.
Funny Story is written by Henry herself.
BerkleyIf you’ve read this far, you no doubt will recognize the name of the screenwriter for Funny Story: It’s Henry herself. No director is attached to this one yet, nor casting, but perhaps Henry and Kuang can share notes about what makes a successful film adaptation. Shunted together at first for work purposes, they became very close.
“I think I can be kind of an intense person. If my job is to be professionally obsessed with you, I know how to do that because I come from fandom,” Kuang told Vogue, speaking about their relationship. “I was like, I’m gonna book a flight to the town that Emily was inspired by, and I’m gonna reread the book there. I didn’t realize that that was also Emily’s college town, and when I asked for a tour, these really lovely girls at Hope College were like, ‘This is where Emily’s class used to be. These are her dorms. This is her former professor…’ and I was just like, I feel like I’m seeing too much. I wasn’t supposed to go this deep! But somehow, from infinite weirdness a beautiful friendship has sprung.”
Sounds like the start of a great rom-com. Expect this one closer to the start of 2026.
