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Would they ever know?
Why was it taking so long to bring the internets favorite X-rated teen romance to screen?
Frustrated, Gibgot made a desperate plea to a studio executive.
I just went to her and I said, I know this is not your fault.
I know that youve tried.
But you have to give meAfterback if youre not gonna make it, Gibgot says.
Because these girls wont stop writing me and I feel like Im really disappointing them.
Its kind of breaking my heart.
Last Friday, five years after the initial sale ofAfter, the movie finally hit theaters worldwide.
Though its beenbattered by critics,Afterfans arrived at the box office as Gibgot knew they would.
The movie outperformed expectations, delivering$6 million domesticallyin its first weekend andeven more globally.
Gibgot expects the film to reach $40 million worldwide by Monday.
The process of adaptation is always fraught; add in a million hypervigilant fans and it gets even trickier.
(Tessas clean-cut friend from English class is, of course, named Liam.)
Todd posted the chapters of her fanfic under the username imaginator1D.
She and Harry bicker, break up, hook up, and talk about Jane Austen.
Commenters requested specific plot points, made related memes, and wrote their own fanfic based on Todds writing.
In 2014, herposts reached 1 billion reads, according to Wattpads measurements.
Thats when the book deal arrived.
Wilson, with Todds help, also trimmed the story.
Even with the edits, the published version ran 582-pages-of-truly-racy-prose long.
Screenwriter Susan McMartins agent sent her the book in 2015.
I was in Paris with my 13-year-old daughter and my 85-year-old mother, she says, laughing.
And Im sitting there reading this book as if Im reading a dirty porno.
Wow, its big.
Much bigger than I expected.
McMartin had 24 hours to prepare to sell her cinematic vision ofAfterwhen she got back to the States.
Her pitch to a room of producers including Todd and Gibgot centered around her respect for the original text.
She was hired immediately to finish the script within seven months, checking in with Todd throughout the process.
[Todds] book is much more50 Shades of Grey, McMartin says.
Its a young version of a kind of steamy, steamy romance novel.
Right away, McMartin felt the presence and pressure ofAfters outspoken internet fandom.
Theyre dying to know, Who got hired to writeourmovie?
I cant even explain to you how much I love the script, Todd wrote on Instagram.
I was terrified it wouldnt be like the books, but it soooo is.
After much frustration, Gibgot seized theAfterrights back in November 2017.
CalMaple agreed to start production right away.
With funding secured, Gibgot, Todd, and the projects many producers went about hiring a director.
I had been reading scripts and the female characters always felt like the second characters, you know?
This one was front and center Tessas story.
It was a coming-of-age sexual awakening all through her point of view.
Remember: Prior to Gages hiring, screenwriter McMartin had made a point of staying loyal to Todds story.
Fiercely loyal, she wrote to me via email.
I had no say in the outcome.
But they swiftly realized that they were entering into a project for which readers had been fantasy-casting for years.
And itd be like, No, you cant, because the fans will go crazy.
That was the casting the fans had pushed forward.
Evil Deadand Gregg Sulkin ofRunaways).
In the end, it was less important to them that Hardin look like Harry Styles at all.
Immediately, we fell in love with Hero.
We found him week one into casting and we cast for six months, Gage says.
With Hero, the producers were not onboard.
And I kept saying, Trust me.
They werent convinced of his looks.
Gage posted a photograph of the meeting for Female Filmmaker Friday.
In the frame was a printout with possible actresses accompanied by postage-stamp-size headshots.
You couldnt see anything!
But the fans had gotten a magnifying app …
Enhance, Betterton says, laughing.
When fans didnt see the name of their favorite, Indiana Evans, there was public uproar.
The producers eventually chose Julia Goldani Telles ofThe Affairanyway, but then shedropped out last Julydue to scheduling issues.
So Josephine Langford became the films Tessa.
Hardin had rough edges that both McMartin and Chestna attempted to smooth in their respective adaptations.
Most importantly, Gages team considerably altered the shocking twist that ended Todds original Wattpad tale.
I didnt want that to happen.
Josephine didnt want that to happen.
But thats one of the things that the director wanted to happen.
So we were all kind of going against one person who happened to be the director.
It was a little hard to find the middle ground with that.
Adaptation, like translation, is a tenuous negotiation between originality and originalism.
But Todds story has no werewolves, vampires, wizards, or chronic disease.
Its not postapocalyptic; the fate of the world doesnt hang in the balance.
Its about a conservative college freshman, a bad boy, and a tumultuous first love.
In the end, the film loses all of its One Direction connections and much of its Hardin Scott.
The question is, what else couldve been done?
It also would have garnered a film rating that would have prohibited its target audience from seeing it.
Perhaps translating Harry Styles to Punk Harry to Hardin Scott to the silver screen was always a quixotic endeavor.
I think thats maybe on the other side of extreme.
Are we dumbing downGame of Thronesbecause of 2019?
I didnt want Hardin to just be a headline of Oh, hes a mean guy!
or Hes this or Hes that.
So I was happy to take away some of his personality.
