After her books have dominated shelves (and bestseller charts) throughout the 2020s, we are finally getting an Emily Henry movie… and it looks perfect.
On Tuesday, Netflix officially released the first trailer for People We Meet on Vacation, their upcoming adaptation of Henry’s 2021 novel. The movie has been buzzed about practically ever since it was put into development, both because it is the first of Henry’s titles to make it into live-action, and because fans have been uniquely invested in its central will-they-won’t-they love story.
It doesn’t hurt that the film is led by two of the Internet’s newest darlings: Emily Bader, star of one of last year’s most heartbreaking TV cancellations, My Lady Jane, and Tom Blyth, who made us all feel an array of emotions as young Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds of Snakes. Directed by Brett Haley, the supporting cast also includes Sarah Catherine Hook, Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount, Lukas Gage, Alice Lee, Alan Ruck, and Molly Shannon.
According to Netflix’s official description for People We Meet on Vacation, in the film, “free-spirited Poppy (Bader) and routine-loving Alex (Blyth) have been unlikely best friends for a decade, living in different cities but spending every summer vacation together. The careful balance of their friendship is put to the test when they begin to question what has been obvious to everyone else — could they actually be the perfect romantic match?”
Are rom-coms back?!
There’s a lot that has been (and will continue to be) said about the state of the romantic comedy, after the genre went from being a cultural staple for decades, to all-but-disappearing from theaters. It’s always been fascinating to me that that conversation has happened concurrently with the rise of the modern romance novel, and the absurd popularity of the genre all over places like BookTok. There are, realistically, more books about cute people falling in love than can ever be read in one lifetime… and if even a fraction of them are adapted into movies or television shows, that still feels like an untapped gold mine, especially when they already have a built-in audience.
We’ve seen this in practice with the overwhelming success of The Summer I Turned Pretty (and even the To All The Boys… franchise before that), and we’re starting to see books with an added genre hook get optioned for movies as well. In and amongst all of that, I have been so excited to see some of Henry’s work join that club. Her six books so far — Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, Happy Place, Funny Story, and this year’s Great Big Beautiful Life — function as both page-turners and as snapshots of the quintessential rom-com.
Luckily, five of the six have already been optioned for movies at different studios (I am particularly excited to see how Beach Read comes to fruition), and as the trailer for People We Meet on Vacation shows, they’re probably going to translate to the screen beautifully. The first glimpses of footage not only sell us on Blyth and Bader’s chemistry and comedic timing, but present the story with a kind of style and visual vibrancy that many readers probably envisioned while reading. (One shot even perfectly recreates the book’s cover!) If this trailer is any indication, People We Meet on Vacation will be day-one viewing for myself… and hopefully, a lot of people.
People We Meet on Vacation is set to debut exclusively on Netflix on January 9th, 2026.
(featured image: Netflix)
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