'Ticket To Paradise': George Clooney And Julia Roberts Pair Up For A New Rom-Com
Mega-stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts have both appeared in their share of romantic comedies – Roberts unquestionably held the crown for years America's Sweetheart in the '90s – but they haven't starred in one together...until now.
The duo, who previously worked together on the Ocean's trilogy and in Jodie Foster's all-but-forgotten 2016 movie Money Monster, have signed on to star in Ticket to Paradise, which feels like a relic of another era – an honest-to-goodness rom-com from a major Hollywood studio that features A-list movie stars. Get the details below.
Deadline reports that Clooney and Roberts, who previously played Tess and Danny Ocean in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Ocean's Thirteen, will produce and star in Ticket to Paradise. The pair will reportedly play "will play a divorced couple that teams up and travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago." A globe-trotting romance starring two of the most charismatic performers in modern American film history? Hell yes, sign me up immediately.
Daniel Pipski, who was a co-executive producer on FX's TV adaptation of A Teacher last year, co-wrote the script with Mama Mia! Here We Go Again helmer Ol Parker, who is also slated to direct. Parker should be able to bring some of that big, splashy, bright energy from the Mama Mia sequel to this project, and I'm curious to see who ends up being cast in the younger roles to see if they'll be able to effectively keep up with the two mega-stars in the lead roles.
Clooney arguably hasn't made a pure rom-com since 2003's Intolerable Cruelty, and it's been a few years for Roberts as well: her back-to-back stretch of Eat, Pray, Love and Larry Crowne in 2010-2011 seems like the last time she did anything significant in that genre. But beyond reuniting two of America's biggest and most well-liked movie stars, the most important thing about Ticket to Paradise might be that it's being developed by Universal Pictures and Working Title for a theatrical release instead of being in the works at a streamer. Streaming services have spent the past ten years throwing tons of money at huge stars to lure them over, and as the rom-com essentially died in the theatrical space, it has experienced a bit of a resurrection on platforms like Netflix. Will a Clooney/Roberts theatrical rom-com be enough to kick-start that genre and bring it back to the big screen for a while? Honestly, probably not – but fingers crossed this one turns out well anyway.