{"id":9795,"date":"2026-09-30T18:23:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/?p=9795"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:23:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:23:39","slug":"the-love-hypothesis-director-why-she-avoided-booktok-when-making-the-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/09\/30\/the-love-hypothesis-director-why-she-avoided-booktok-when-making-the-film\/","title":{"rendered":"The Love Hypothesis director reveals why she avoided BookTok when making the film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claire Scanlon, the director of The Love Hypothesis, has opened up about why she avoided scouring BookTok<\/a> while making the film adaptation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The movie landed on Prime Video<\/a> last week, and is based on Ali Hazelwood’s 2021 The Love Hypothesis novel, which itself started its life as Star Wars<\/a> fanfiction about a romance between Rey and Kylo Ren.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 2026 adaptation, Tom Bateman and Lili Reinhart<\/a> portray the two leads, professor Dr. Adam Carlsen and PhD student Olive Smith. And while it\u2019s received plenty of praise, fans of the novel haven\u2019t held back when it came to the changes made to the original story – including the removal of Holden<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Given just how protective its enormous BookTok fandom is over the original, you’d probably assume Scanlon spent months lurking through fan theories and figuring out exactly what readers wanted from the movie. In reality, she deliberately did the complete opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why The Love Hypothesis director avoided BookTok<\/h2>\n
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Credit: Prime Video<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Appearing on the Off The Shelf podcast, host Morgann Book asked the filmmaker how far she went on BookTok or The Love Hypothesis<\/a> fan spaces, to which she replied, \u201cNone of it. I just read the book.\u201d But she actually believes this was a benefit when making the movie. <\/span><\/p>\n

Scanlon said if she\u2019d known from the start just how much love there is for the novel, Ali Hazelwood and her wider work, \u201cI would have been scared\u2026 Ignorance in that situation was to my benefit for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And ultimately, when the producer sent her a script for The Love Hypothesis<\/a>, she loved it. If she had gone straight onto BookTok, she might have never taken on the project. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s when she started to say words I did not understand, which were, \u2018It’s based on a book that got very popular on BookTok, which is fanfiction from Star Wars.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018I understand none of what you just,\u2019\u201d Scanlon quipped. <\/span><\/p>\n