‘How to End a Love Story’ Author of TV adaptation, ‘Beach Read’ movie

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Yulin Kuang’s new novel ‘How to End a Love Story’, released on April 9.

Yulin Kuang was deep into her romance novel era before releasing her own first attempt at the genre, “How to End a Love Story,” last month. The debut author, who has focused her career to date on writing for television and films, actually began writing her book while she was editing two rom-coms from bestselling author Emily Henry: “Beach Read” (which Kuang also will do). directly) and “People we meet on holiday.”

“How to End a Love Story” follows straightforward, successful writer Helen and charming ex-jock Grant, who fall in love while working together in a TV writers’ room adapting Helen’s YA book series. And despite the book’s title and the dark high school history Helen and Grant share surrounding the death of Helen’s little sister when they were teenagers, Kuang ensures they live happily ever after by the end.

Here, Kuang (who created the now-cancelled CW series “I Ship It!”) explains Variety how she would like to see her own book adapted into a Hollywood film – including the fact that she prefers a TV series to a movie (for obvious reasons).

If it is adapted, would you prefer “How to End a Love Story” as a TV show or movie?

I would only do it as a series. I was talking to a director friend and she said, “Why don’t you want to do this as a movie?” And I was like, ‘Because I don’t want the second act to be in New Jersey. I want the New Jersey episode. That seems more logical to me. I want the camping episode, the Jersey episode. But I don’t want the second act to be like camping and New Jersey and then we come back. That doesn’t feel like the promise of our premise, as a film. I’m also really drawn to the meta idea of ​​a TV show about a writers’ room and seeing how an actual writers’ room would transform this into something else appropriate for the medium.

Are you currently in discussions with a studio, network or streamer for the TV rights?

We are not. We haven’t released it officially, I think because my team actually really wants me to consider a movie and I’m not going to change my mind.

Do you have any actors in mind to play Grant and Helen?

To be honest, I don’t really do fan casting. I wonder if it’s because I work in Hollywood and work with actors so much that there’s a part of me that’s so aware of how an individual actor can come into and inhabit a role and that it’s this perfect blend of alchemy is what they get into. the character and that knew what you had before. So I wasn’t thinking about specific actors as much as I was thinking about archetypes. Like she’s the overachiever type and he’s the Golden Boy. So I was thinking in terms of those archetypes, but not specific actors.

Would you like to be the showrunner or write the series yourself? How involved would you like to be?

I would like more control than Helen, because I have more experience in my career than Helen. But I would like more voices in the writers’ room. I wouldn’t want to do the thing where I’m alone. Because I know some people do. But given the nature of the story, it is interesting to include other voices. And I would probably like to direct the pilot and maybe the finale as well. But I would love to see what other artists would bring to it, because I think that’s the fun of filmmaking as a team sport.

I know you have a three-book deal with publisher Avon – have you considered making a sequel to ‘How to End a Love Story’ as one of those books?

What attracts me to romance as a genre is the way the stories end, and that’s not necessarily how the characters end. I think the characters exist in this world: Grant is living the pilot season and Helen is in the background writing books and such. But I guess this is where I leave them. I wrote them in such a way that I’m interested in them and I’m ready to tackle other stories.

When I spoke with Emily Henry ahead of the release of her new book, “Funny Story,” she was looking forward to receiving new versions of “Beach Read” and “People We Meet on Vacation” from you. Have you talked about that yet and how close are you to locking the scripts?

I delivered those drafts before I went on book tour. And what I realized is that when they say ‘pub month’ at publishing houses, they mean pub month. They take the full 30 or 31 days. Once pub month is over, I’ll resume work on ‘Beach Read’. At least there will be notes from the studio on “Beach Read.” But my time with ‘People We Meet on Vacation’ is probably over. I think [director] Brett [Haley] got it from here.

Emily’s new book ‘Funny Story’ and her previous book ‘Happy Place’ are not currently being developed for television or film. If and when these rights are sold, would you like to adjust either or both as well?

Listen, I love Emily. I love her work so much, so much of it resonates with me. I’ll never say a hard no, but my dance card is pretty full.

This interview has been edited and condensed.