No romantic comedies will be produced or released in America from this day forward, studio heads announced today (the first of April, 2014).
"No one in this country has any interest in seeing a movie about two people falling in love, let alone laughing about it," one studio chairman told LTRC this morning. His sentiments were echoed by his female counterpart at a rival studio. "We're automatically 'passing' on all rom-com specs from now on, no matter whether Leo, Jennifer Lawrence, or even Benedict Cumberbatch is attached," she revealed. "The genre is dead as disco. Didn't you read that L.A. Weekly article a few weeks ago?"
The studio head was referring to the "Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?" cover story in the Weekly, which, as everyone in Hollywood knows, is the bible of all industry wisdom. Many such articles have been omnipresent in the media lately, so this official edict from industry gatekeepers has simply seemed inevitable.
"Look, Americans are far more interested in franchise super-heroes finding louder ways to blow s--- up. We want to see heads roll and blood spill," said one top executive. "Why do I want to look at a couple of people making out? That's just gross." A colleague pointed to this year's original screenplay Oscar win as an indication of the trend. "If the only rom-com anybody sees is about a guy who's in love with his operating system, then sure, we might greenlight a movie about two operating systems that hook up. But a love story with people in it? Ew."
"If the Asian market wants to get into the wedding comedy business, things might turn around in the future," said one industry rag reporter, "But everyone here is too busy trying to figure out what comes after vampires and zombies, and it ain't a couple of lovelorn dingbats singing karaoke, I can tell you that."
It's possible that a recent American Psychiatry Association report "Rom-Coms: The Root of Widespread Delusional Behavior" may have proved influential. LTRC has been unable to confirm rumors that the ban was in part fueled by a congressional committee looking into legislation that would redefine the personhood of a fetus as beginning at the moment of a couple's 'meet cute.'
Comedy king Judd Apatow is nonetheless sanguine about this development. His new project would seem to avoid the rom-com restrictive ban, as it's a feature adaptation of the Lonely Island's SNL video 3-Way (The Golden Rule) featuring Andy Samberg, Justin Timberlake, and some honey to be announced. The feature explores the universally acknowledged truth that "it's not gay, when it's in a threeway."
Meanwhile, the Katherine Heigl suicide watch continues, with writer-director Nancy Meyers relocating to France, the one country defiantly continuing to make her kind of movies. Accordingly, the infamous Fox studio lot set that long served as the airport so many lovers raced to in the climaxes of a myriad romantic comedies has been struck down, with a new Legoland Dystopia set rumored to take its place.
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