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'Love Hard': Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang, Charles Melton Star In Netflix's Dating App Romantic-Comedy

love hard
By Hoai-Tran Bui

The Netflix romantic-comedy machine never stops working, and the streamer's latest rom-com is tapping into today's most popular mode of dating: the dating app. Headlining the latest rom-com, titled Love Hard, will be Nina Dobrev, who stars as a girl who falls for a hot guy on a dating app and flies across the country to surprise him. But naturally, things don't go as expected.

Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang (Space Force) and Charles Melton (Riverdale) are set to star in the Netflix rom-com Love Hard, which will be directed by Hernán Jiménez, who directed About Us and Elsewhere. The spec script was written by Danny Mackey and literary agent-turned screenwriter Rebecca Ewing, according to Deadline, which was described as "When Harry Met Sally meets Roxanne." That pitch caught the attention of Netflix, which acquired the project last August. The movie will be produced by McG and Mary Viola through their Wonderland banner. Steven Bello will executive produce.

Netflix announced the casting of Dobrev, Yang, and Melton in a tweet Friday: "Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang and Charles Melton will star in the upcoming Netflix movie LOVE HARD, about a girl who falls for a hot guy on a dating app and flies across the country to surprise the man she's never met in person for Christmas. What could possibly go wrong?"

The premise described by Netflix sounds innocuous enough, but reports detail Love Hard as a catfishing rom-com — Dobrev's unlucky in love LA girl flies to the East Coast to surprise her dating app love interest for Christmas, only to discover she's been duped. But the catfisher (likely Yang, if we're going by assumptions) offers to set her up with the guy in his profile if she pretends to be his girlfriend for the holidays.

Cyrano de Bergerac, which inspired the 1987 Steve Martin comedy Roxanne, seems to be enjoying a resurgence in popularity, at least with Netflix, which has used the 1897 Edmond Rostand play as its basis for not one, but two of its recent films — the very bad Sierra Burgess is a Loser and the surprisingly good The Half of It. Where will Love Hard fall? The premise of Cyrano — an "unsightly" man who tries to woo a beautiful girl through a more handsome suitor — has always been a little backwards, but Netflix seems to be really attached to it. And with catfishing a popular part of the vernacular now, it makes for an easy fit.

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