Colin Egglesfield Reveals the Depressing Reason ‘Pretty Woman’ Would Never Be Made Today and Why ‘Something Borrowed’ Won’t Get a Sequel (Exclusive)
Rom-com fans may have noticed an absence of films like Pretty Woman or Something Borrowed in theaters over the past several years. The reason isn’t that audiences have abandoned love. Instead, big studios no longer have love for the romantic comedy genre.
For instance, the 2011 romantic comedy Something Borrowed left fans with a cliffhanger, leaving the door open for a sequel. But it never arrived on either the big or small screen.
Actor Colin Egglesfield, who played Dex in Something Borrowed, says fans shouldn’t hold their breath for a sequel. “I think it’s a combination of the perfect storm of Netflix coming out, people building better and nicer home theater systems,” Egglesfield told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “And the number of people going to movie theaters started to go down right around when Netflix really started to take off.”
Egglesfield explained why Something Borrowed, or even an iconic film like Pretty Woman, would never be made today, which is why audiences don’t see many rom-coms in theaters anymore.
The absence of films like ‘Something Borrowed’ in theaters comes down to money
Egglesfield said the combination of multiple streaming platforms and the cost to produce a major motion picture elbowed films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Something Borrowed off to the sidelines.
“There were so many amazing shows,” he remarked. “TV series that were starting to film like on HBO. And obviously Netflix and Cinemax and Showtime. A lot of the A-list actors who were movie stars started to do television. And [producers] just couldn’t justify putting up the kind of money of what it cost to make Something Borrowed or like even like a Pretty Woman or a How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”
Shockingly, he shared that rom-com films simply don’t produce enough return on investment for studios. “Those films that are like a $30 million film,” he said. “So that’s the films in between that $10 million to $100 million range just kind of evaporated overnight because the return at the box office just isn’t what it used to be.”
Money is one reason why superhero flicks dominate the big screen
Blockbusters like Avengers and X-Men clean up at the box office because studios are following the Benjamins.
“So it’s either these gigantic tentpole superhero films or these smaller independent films where they ask actors to work for scale,” Egglesfield explained. “Because the quality of the material is awesome and great and compelling for an actor.”
“But unfortunately, we gotta pay bills, too,” he added. “So that’s led to a lot of actors, obviously, to work on television and it just it’s really sad because, man, I miss romantic comedies. I miss that genre. There are so many great films like romantic comedies from the ’90s and early 2000s that we just don’t really see anymore.”
“Unfortunately, it’s a dying genre,” he admitted. “Unless you turn to Lifetime and Hallmark. That’s really the only place where you’re getting to see those kinds of stories. But unfortunately, they’re just a fraction of the budget of the studio films.”
While fans won’t be seeing Egglesfield in the Something Borrowed sequel any time soon, they can catch him in the new psychological thriller, 100 Days to Live, which will be released in early 2021 on all major digital platforms.
